India must open up further to FDI to maintain economic growth - finance minister |
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Published
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Tue, 30 Jan 2007 06:30
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NEW DELHI (XFN-ASIA) - India must open up its economy further to foreign direct investment (FDI) if it is to maintain its targeted economic growth, Finance Minister P. Chidambaram said.P. Chidambaram told the Financial Times that sustaining an investment rate of close to 34-35 pct of gross domestic product (GDP) would be key to maintaining growth.'This means we must keep the environment very enabling for investment, both domestic and foreign: ample liquidity, good flow of credit, opening up more sectors which are closed or too tightly regulated, opening up to foreign direct investment and looking for innovative financing, especially in infrastructure, where there's a hunger appetite for investment,' he said in an interview.Chidambaram said foreign investment in India is currently worth about 9 bln usd a year.'In infrastructure alone, we need to get about 20 billion dollars to 24 billion dollars a year. So there is still a huge gap,' he said.'The fear that foreign investors are going to take over the economy is not justified at all. In terms of our GDP, the flow of investment into India is very small at about one percent of GDP,' he said.sas/bmm/rc
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