Global interest for investments in Indian infrastructure is very much alive

Indian infrastructure is very much alive in the minds of global players who continue to show keen interest in investing in the sector, said Ghulam Zia, Executive Director, Knight Frank at the Annual Convention of the Indo American Chamber of Commerce (IACC).

While speaking at the special session on Infrastructure ?What India needs to spend over the next decade and how it will be funded?, Zia said that global players are waiting in the wings for the system to evolve and in the recent past various initiatives have been taken in this direction. ?For Indian infrastructure to fall in place as far as funding is concerned, the area of concern is government spending and real estate has to be taken out of the system for infrastructure funding to fall in place?, he added.

NN Kumar, former chairman, Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust, said ? For any infrastructure project to materialize various aspects such as flexibility in timelines set, clear clauses of the termination of contract, syncing with the political set-up of the economy for deciding tariffs have to be taken care of?. He felt that the timelines for contractual agreements for various projects should be reduced as there could be various technological changes during long time period.

Before the start of the session, Founder Member of IACC Late Ambalal Kilachand was posthumously felicitated for his contribution to the Indo American trade relations. The citation was received by Tanil Kilachand his son and Chairman Polychem.

During the special session on Agriculture titled Can India and USA collaborate in Agriculture, Anil Jain, Vice Chairman, Jain Irrigation, said that the technological adoption has been happening in our country since the last decade and has reduced the cost and enhanced he efficiency, taking other things into consideration better productivity will help the farmers in value-addition. We have a long road to cover in achieving mechanisation for which we need new revolution in agriculture and that can happen only when we industrialise our agriculture sector. Together, we need to build a sustainable environment for the farmers, he added.

In the concluding session on ?How to meet India?s Defence Needs?, Commodore (Retd) Mukesh Bhargava, Head, L&T Defence, and VS Noronha, Vice President Defence and Government Business, Tata Motors, observed that since past the few years, a change has been witnessed at government-to-government and business-to-business level, which has defined its own course of action. ?We have slowly seen an increase in exports which has resulted in manpower as well as technological migration. We no more procure defence goods from developed countries, but also we are manufacturing and exporting defence goods to other countries? they felt.