Union Minister of Commerce & Industry Piyush Goyal has attributed India’s growth momentum to nation’s tall efforts in its Infrastructure mission, focus on Integrity, Inclusive development and International outlook.
These are the “four ‘I’s helping India’s transformation”, Goyal said. He was speaking at the B20 India inception meeting held in Gandhinagar, Gujarat from January 22–24. Established in 2010, B20 is the official G20 dialogue forum with the global business community on economic and trade governance. The Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) has been designated as the B20 Secretariat.
The minister said that India has been working relentlessly to meet the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Goyal emphasised that during India’s G20 presidency, businesses need to work towards transitioning into sustainable and greener future.
“There is a crisis of climate action and climate finance. There is also a crisis of 75 countries in the world facing a global debt crisis. As the IMF Chief has said, one-third of the world is under recessionary trend. So the Prime Minister of India has said that India’s leadership of G20 will be decisive; it will be inclusive and it will be action-oriented”Amitabh Kant India’s G20 Sherpa
Equitable agenda
He urged business community to streamline and build a permanent agenda. The community must prioritise innovation and focus on making technology affordable and easily accessible to all. This will help bring about an “equitable” agenda for the future, he said.
The minister also praised PM Narendra Modi’s vision of ‘Vasudaiva Kutumbakam’. “PM Narendra Modi ji cares for the world as he cares for every citizen in India, for economic stability, for peace & dialogue globally, brings for the world the idea of ‘Vasudaiva Kutumbakam’,” Goyal said. Union Minister for Electronics and Information Technology, Communications and Railways, Ashwini Vaishnaw, presented four approaches on economic management, digital economy, and regulation in new technologies that India has taken in the recent past to maintain its relatively high growth rate amid global crisis.
“I would like to share four approaches that India has taken under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi that could perhaps be good approaches to share among all of us and see if many of those approaches could help us solve some of the pressing problems the world is facing,” said Vaishnaw.
Union Minister of State for Commerce and Industry, Som Parkash drew attention towards the advantages that India offers for businesses. He appealed to the industry to make the most of India’s G20 presidency and proactively participate in the dialogues in B20 meetings.
Global value chains
India’s G20 Sherpa, Amitabh Kant, reiterated PM Modi’s call for “inclusive, ambitious, decisive, and action-oriented growth agenda.” He said that the world is staring at its biggest challenges. Accelerating digital transformation and making climate financing an inclusive effort, with developed world accepting its responsibility, will be an uphill task. Decoupling and demonopolizing global value chains to make them more resilient would be another huge challenge, he added.
“There is a crisis of rising energy prices in Europe. We have seen the post-Covid impact of 200 million people going below poverty line, 100 million people have lost their jobs. There is a crisis of climate action and climate finance. There is also a crisis of 75 countries in the world facing a global debt crisis. As the IMF Chief has said, one-third of the world is under recessionary trend. So the Prime Minister of India has said that India’s leadership of G20 will be decisive; it will be inclusive and it will be actionoriented,” Kant said.
Unique opportunity
Tata Sons Chairman, and B20 India Chair, N Chandrasekaran, said that during India’s G20 presidency sustainability, energy transition, mobility, biodiversity, water management and UN SDGs have been identified as the priority areas for B20 India.
Excited about India’s year long tenure of G20, Chandrasekaran said, “India is in a very unique position in the world at a time (when) we are seeing several moving parts, and B20, during India’s leadership of G20, has a unique opportunity and has a very important role to play,” he said. Highlighting the tremendous track record of India with respect to digital transformation and the deployment of digital infrastructure development programs and public services delivery, he said that G20 presidency is an opportunity for India to showcase and share best practices.
“I’m very very confident this is going to be a very exciting journey for the next several months and we will not only come up with the term policy recommendations, but also confident that we will leave behind a few specific legacy institutions that will serve the G20 nations for a long time to come,” Chandrasekaran said.
Sanjiv Bajaj, President, CII, and CMD, Bajaj Finserv, commended B20 India’s efforts to represent the issues relevant to the global economy. B20 India will work through seven task forces and two action councils to realise the B20’s strategic vision. The goal is to translate the vision into policy deliverables on issues that have global relevance.
