Bolder reforms in offing post Modi’s re-election: USISPF

PTI, Jun 2, 2019, 11:37 AM IST

New Delhi: Following the landslide victory of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the government is expected to roll-out bolder reforms, which will position India for the next 25 years, a senior official of US-based India-centric business advocacy and strategic group said. Prime Minister Modi, on May 23, led his Bharatiya Janata Party towards a resounding victory for a second term in office.

He further said that “expectations are very high and with such a large majority, we feel that there would be bolder reforms coming through, which will position India for the next 25 years”.

On May 30, Modi was sworn in as the Prime Minister for a second term helming a 58-member ministry.

Besides 25 Cabinet ministers, including Modi, Amit Shah, Rajnath Singh, Nirmala Sitharaman, Nitin Gadkari, Smriti Irani, Piyush Goyal and S Jaishankar, nine were sworn in as Minister of State with Independent charge and another 24 as Minister of State.

“This government will come out very fast on reforms. It knows, it has to deliver the economic agenda,” he said, adding that the new government should consider labour and land reforms in order to attract global companies.

“If you want to attract manufacturing you have to do labour reforms, you got to look at the land reforms, because companies need big chunk of land to manufacture. While the government has done a lot of good work on IBC, they need to see how they can make IBC more effective,” Aghi said.

Regarding India-US trade, he said it is growing in double digits. Today, the India-US trade is around USD 142 billion and it is going up in double digits and can touch USD 500 billion in next 10 years.

“I strongly believe that the trade with US will pick up. US companies today have invested over USD 50 billion in last four years. They support over 3.2 million jobs and that will continue because with the challenge of US with China, India becomes an option,” he said.

On India being removed from US’ currency monitoring list of major trading partners, he said: “it was rather a mistake to put India on the currency watch list. It was natural to take it out because India does not manipulate on the currency side. It has strong reserves but its not the same as China”.

Last Tuesday, the Trump administration removed India from its currency monitoring list of major trading partners, citing certain developments and steps being taken by New Delhi addressing some of its major concerns. Switzerland is the other nation that has been removed from the list.

However, the list includes China, Japan, South Korea, Germany, Italy, Ireland, Singapore, Malaysia and Vietnam, among others.