India's fundamentals are totally intact: Amitabh Kant, Niti Aayog

Mumbai: India’s fundamentals are totally intact and the government is conscious about the fact that it has to take India back to its high growth trajectory, NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant said on Tuesday.

“Let me assure you the government is totally alive, receptive and despite the global headwinds , we are very conscious that we have to take India to high trajectory growth rate,” he said at the Morningstar Investment Conference in Mumbai.

“India’s fundamentals are totally intact. India has a very vibrant private sector, and India has a government which is very committed to reforms,” he said.

He said the government’s objective is to really push for 100 lakh crore of infrastructure on ground.
“We will give a big push to highways, infrastrctue,” Kant said.

India has made itself a very complex and complicated place to do business over the years, he pointed.

He said that our challenge has been to make India easy and simple so that the private sector can create wealth over a period of time.

“We opened up our economy to range of areas in the last five years,” he said while adding that opening up of FDI regime has been good for India.

Foreign direct investment into India grew by 28 per cent to $16.33 billion during the first quarter of the current fiscal, according to government data.

Inflow of foreign direct investment (FDI) during April-June of 2018-19 stood at $12.75 billion.

Kant also said that the process of urbanisation has just begun in the country, which is bigger than 24 countries of Europe.

“The challenge in India is we must plan and urbanise cities. This will be a key driver of India’s growth,” he said.

He also highlighted that India has done some far reaching structural reforms. “We replaced 17 taxes with one tax – GST. We ended crony capitalism with the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) and Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) is also a critical reform,” said Kant.

He also believes that startups will bring a lot of innovation. “You will see a lot of disruption due to our startups and India will be way forward in terms of data and artificial intelligence,” said Kant.

The government's think tanks also added that technology will play a critical role in the growth.