Chidamabaram to visit Frankfurt to woo investors

Chidambaram will attend a roadshow on investment opportunities in India hosted by Deutsche Bank and Barclays Bank in Germany's financial centre and will hold discussions with leading representatives of European companiesand institutional investors.

He is expected to bolster investor confidence in the world's fourth largest economy by outlining the measures taken by the Indian government in the past months to further liberalise foreign investments in various sectors, including multi-brand retail, single brand retail, power trading exchanges, commodity exchanges, non-banking financial institutions, broadcasting and aviation.

He may also assure them that India's economy is on the path to recovery and will bounce back to 8 per cent growth, driven by continuing efforts by the government to implement economic reforms and to reduce fiscal deficit as well as by improvements in FDI inflows into the country and gains on the export front.

The government set a fiscal deficit target of 5.3 per cent of the GDP for the current year.

According to official estimates, the economy is expected to grow by 5.7 per cent in 2012-2013 and by 6.7 per cent in 2013-2014, but economic analysts forecast that growth for the current financial year will be around 5.5 per cent.

Economic growth during the second half of 2012-2013 slowed down to 5.3 per cent from 6.7 per cent in the corresponding period in the previous year.