The Prime Minister’s Office is going to convene a series of high level meetings involving key ministries in which the concerns raised by CEOs and business houses to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, which has stopped them from investing in India, will be discussed.
Officials aware of the development said that the Prime Minister, while he was travelling to New York and California last week, was categorically told by the CEOs that the environment in India was still not conducive to put in investment and unless and until issues related to starting business in India, excessive bureaucratic hindrance and too much of government control are addressed, none of the major IT giants including Facebook, Google and Microsoft were likely to target India as a potential market in the near future.
The agenda of these meetings, officials said, will be to make doable plans, making investor friendly policies, expediting the process of giving government tenders and amendments in some of the labour laws that, according to these CEOs, have stopped them from investing in India.
One such meeting of senior officials from at least 20 ministries, which was attended by Cabinet Secretary P.K. Sinha, was convened last week in which the concerns raised by the US based companies were discussed. Ministries were asked to address these concerns within a specific time period.
According to officials, the PM is not happy with the responses that he received from the CEOs who told him that despite more than 15 months of his government, not much has changed on the ground.
“The CEOs very frankly told the PM that they are not going to put India in the investment hub category until things change on the ground. They also reminded him that when he had visited the US in September 2014, he had promised them that things will definitely change, but that does not seem to have happened,” an official familiar with the development said.
The PMO has reportedly asked the ministers and officials to perform or make way for others. “The PMO’s instructions are very simple. Most of the ministers have been in their position for a long time now and the PM wants to see them bringing in a concrete change in their respective ministries, which is not happening.
Key ministries that are working in fields of infrastructure have been asked to prepare a report on how these impediments can be removed and present it before the PMO as soon as possible,” the official added.