Finance minister will go to Washington, DC, and San Francisco.
By Sithara Sethumadhavan
On a busy first day of his 9-day US trip, India’s Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said the Indian economy has the potential to grow at more than 7.5 percent, the rate it achieved so far under his watch.
Speaking to CNBC in New York on Wednesday, Jaitley said the “credibility of the Indian economy has been virtually re-established” and we “think we have an ability to do much better.”
Addressing the concerns of global investors, he said “aggressive adversarial tax regime” is a thing of the past in India. “We will probably have one of the more tax friendly regimes in India.”
The minister’s activities of the day included ringing the closing bell at the New York Stock Exchange, where he met executives who gave him a tour of the trading floor. Jaitley was accompanied by Indian Ambassador to the United States Arun Kumar Singh and the country’s Consul General in New York Dnyaneshwar Mulay.
Later in the night, he attended a private dinner hosted by an Indian firm.
On Friday, Jaitley will travel to Washington, where he is scheduled to meet with Treasury Secretary Jack Lew and foreign institutional investors. He is scheduled to have a lunch meeting hosted by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry, with prominent Indian American businessmen on Saturday and also attend a roundtable hosted by the US-India Business Council.
Another city the finance minister is scheduled to visit before returning to India is San Francisco, where he will address an event, on June 23, hosted by the Confederation of Indian Industry, in partnership with TiE.
One of the goals of Jaitley’s visit is to boost some of its core economic agendas, including finding novel ways to attract foreign investment to India. The minister is expected to draw attention to the various initiatives formulated by the NDA government under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The most highlighted initiative of the Modi government, “Make in India,” is expected to attract billions of dollars to the country in FDI if foreign investors respond to the program positively.