By Dipankar De Sarkar, IANS
Davos (Switzerland) : Transacting 95 percent of the stocks of an economy projected to become the world’s third largest, the city of Mumbai was Thursday showcased before businessmen and investors gathered in Davos as a future world financial centre to rival London and New York.
“With $60 billion earmarked to develop the Mumbai Metropolitan Region, and if all other things fall into place, then a world financial centre has to come to Mumbai,” said Maharashtra Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh told investors at a meeting held on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum (WEF).
He was backed up Aviation Minister and Maharashtra politician Praful Patel and Sunil Bharti Mittal, CEO of Indian conglomerate Bharti Enterprises and head of the Confederation of Indian Industries.
“From a size of $1 trillion today, the Indian economy is projected to grow $30 trillion by 2040,” Mittal said.
“There is no reason why Mumbai cannot stand alongside New York, London and Singapore as a world financial centre in the future,” he pointed out.
“India deserves a global financial centre,” Mittal said, adding that the economy was backed by “regulation, framework and institutional mechanisms”.
Patel, Deshmukh and Mittal are in an 80-strong Indian delegation to the WEF, the largest team at the annual business event that has drawn some 2,500 business and political leaders from 88 countries this year.
Mittal contrasted India’s private sector fuelled growth with that of China.
He said Shanghai was being developed as a world financial centre by China “which as a state was determined to make acquisitions outside China”.
Although aware of the challenges of poor infrastructure the Indian team has highlighted progress made in telecommunications and information technology, as well as urban development plans involving tens of billions of dollars, to push Mumbai’s case before foreign investors here.
“The strength of the Indian economy is its future potential,” said Praful Patel but he acknowledged that the infrastructure sector could be further opened up to foreign investors.
With as many as 46 major international companies having opened their offices in Mumbai in the last year alone, he said: “We certainly deserve to be in the same league as London, New York and Singapore”.
Indian households had spent $13 billion on foreign financial products in 2007 and the figure is set to grow to $48 billion in 2015 and $80 billion if the economy grows at 9 percent, said Sanjay Nayar, CEO of Citi India.