IBLA Awards'13: Focus on economic challenges for India

At the jury round of the annual CNBC-TV18 India Business Leader Awards (IBLA), the discussion on our economic situations was in focus.

The jury was headed by Deepak Parekh, including other distinguished personalities like Kumar Mangalam Birla, Arun Maira, AM Naik, Naina Lal Kidwai, Bimal Jalan and Raghav Bahl, all of who expressed their views on the key challenges facing the Indian economy. Also see: Highlights from the Financial Advisor Awards 2012-13 Below are the some of their comments: KM Birla, Chairman, Aditya Birla Group: If you have 50 percent of this 78,000 MW of power projects actually starting to roll, I think that is a huge confidence booster. I think that the negative mood at least in industry will start to shift. We don't require a whole lot to be done. We're talking about clarity of policy and consistency of policy and execution. If industry believes that execution is beginning to happen, that projects are starting to roll again, that is a huge positive. Arun Maira, Member, Planning Commission, said, “If we talk of investments from outside opening up doors more and more is not what's going to invite investment into this country. This country is already very open, but people look inside and say, my goodness I am going to get stuck in some muddle inside. So please make your system inside work and then money will come. India has a future, they can see that, but right now I am going to wait till you fix it.” Bimal Jalan, Former Governor, RBI: I would take into account the total macroeconomic situation. If you want to resolve the fiscal deficit issue then you must take into account the impact of fiscal deficit on Current Account Deficit (CAD), financing of CAD. It is not an easy task, so you have to always do certain amount of out-of-box thinking, particularly if things are not too good.” ”The last couple of years have been most disappointing, because I thought from the 2008 crisis to 2010 we had done a good job of getting ourselves out through a strong stimulus programme,” said Raghav Bahl, Editor-In-Chief, Network18: However, in 2010 when I thought the government needed to withdraw, and allow other forces to takeover, essentially private investment and private enterprise - the government instead of doing that expanded its base, the balance sheet expanded. Along with that we saw this whole policy paralysis, but for me it was really a decision making paralysis. I don’t think too many policies were stuck; it was just that the government was unable to take a lot of decisions. So in that sense governance and politics have been very disappointing in the last three years, Bahl added.