By IANS,
New Delhi/Mumbai: Indian conglomerate Tata Sons Saturday rebutted media reports quoting its chairman Ratan Tata of “warning the government of inaction” and the presence of a “venal business environment” in the country.
“Tata Sons clarifies that in Ratan N. Tata’s interview with the Financial Times, he spoke about coherence in implementation of government policy as a need rather than warning government of inaction or venal business environment,” the company said in a statement.
According to the statement, Tata did not use any of the terms like “lashes into the PM”, “rapping India”, “warning the government of inaction” or “venal business environment.”
“These are terms used by the publications and not by Tata, in any manner,” the statement said.
The company further said that Tata has always supported Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, even at times when there was a mass criticism of the government.
The company also provided transcripts of the interview in which Financial Times asked Tata whether doing business in India is getting more difficult.
Tata replied: “You know, I have always been bullish about India’s potential. I still am and I feel India is a country that really has an enormous amount of potential and has the human capital to succeed.”
“But if you sit down and say will it succeed? You see imbalances; you see energy availability is not enough to keep pace with the high rate of growth. Then you see more recently you have got issues of land and land acquisition for projects,” Tata added.
Based on the transcripts, the company added that it was surprised that media entities have sensationalised the observations, without taking into cognisance the tone, tenor and context of the interview.