By IANS
New Delhi : The high-profile India summit of the Davos-based World Economic Forum (WEF), the 23rd in the annual series, kicks off here Sunday to bring together some 700 business, political and civil society leaders from 36 countries.
“The summit is designed to generate insight and guide action to improve the alignment of India’s development, industry and global agendas in the context of this year’s theme ‘Building Centres of Excellence’,” the forum said.
Some of the prominent speakers at the summit include External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee, Finance Minister P. Chidambaram, Commerce Minister Kamal Nath and Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia.
The participants at the summit include more than 350 chief executives and board-level corporate heads from overseas and 200 each from the Indian arms of foreign companies and domestic entities, the organisers said.
The event – co-hosted by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) – will cover four thematic pillars, namely competitiveness, inclusive growth, infrastructure, and risk management, to examine how to address key challenges to future growth.
“During the summit, we will release the India@Risk 2007 report, jointly compiled by WEF and CII, which examines six global risks critical to India’s future,” said Sunil Bharti Mittal, president of CII and chairman of Bharti Enterprises.
“Sustaining a double-digit gross domestic product (GDP) growth would require an intense effort on several fronts by a multitude of stakeholders,” said Mittal, as he explained what the event hoped to achieve through its 62 sessions.
The co-chairs of the event include Mukesh Ambani of Reliance Industries, Anand Mahindra of Mahindra and Mahindra, Edward J. Zander of Motorola, and Hector de J. Ruiz of Advanced Micro Devices (AMD).