PM Narendra Modi meets top CEOs for budget inputs

New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday met with chief executives of leading companies across sectors ranging from banking to telecom, to health and electronics, for inputs for the next year's Budget.
Last week, he had met with leading private equity/ venture capital players to seek suggestions on making India a more attractive investment destination.

The upcoming Budget would focus on accelerating growth hit by the COVID-19 pandemic.

On Monday, the prime minister interacted with the leading CEOs of companies across banking, infrastructure, automobiles, telecom, consumer goods, textile, renewables, hospitality, technology healthcare, space and electronics, official sources said.

This meeting, they said, is part of the many interactions that Modi is holding ahead of the Budget to receive inputs and suggestions from the private sector.

This is one of the many interactions being done by the prime minister ahead of the Budget to receive inputs and suggestions from the private sector.

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman is due to present on February 1 the Budget for the next fiscal year that starts on April 1, 2022.

Since coming to power in 2014, the BJP government has unveiled a series of reforms that have helped India climb on the global ease of doing business ranking.

It is now pushing for making India a manufacturing hub. Production-linked incentive schemes for sectors from automobiles to semiconductors and solar have been announced to attract global manufacturers to set up a base in the country.

Emerging from the meeting, TCS CEO Rajesh Gopinathan said, "What's most important is his (prime minister) focus on research innovation, his belief in the capacity that India has to step way beyond where we are."

Gopinathan further said the prime minister has laid out a clear vision statement saying that in every sector in every industry, India should be among the top five globally.

Manu Kapoor of Samsung India said the prime minister has come out with a lot of decisions on PLIs to support manufacturing and exports.

Time has come for Indian business and Indian industry, India's banking and financial sector to think about scale without fear, Kotak Mahindra Bank CEO Uday Kotak said.

"I am enthused about the potential of India, and Indian banking and finance are out there ready to support industry across, sustainability inclusion digital and infrastructure," Kotak said.

Mallika Srinivasan, chairman and managing director of Tractors and Farm Equipments Ltd, said the whole interaction today was about how to take India forward.

Observing that the prime minister has a grand vision and ambitions for India, Maruti Suzuki India MD and CEO Kenichi Ayukawa said the industry is fully committed to contributing to his grand vision by making India a manufacturing hub.

After the interaction, Sumant Sinha, chairman and MD of ReNew Power, said the meeting was interesting, positive and encouraging.

"He heard us for almost two hours, about all issues and problems and also the opportunities that corporates like us talked about in our respective sector," Sinha said.

OYO Chief Executive Officer Ritesh Agarwal said that under the leadership of Modi, the number of the unicorns has surged from just 11 in 2016 to 79 at present.

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