Industry asks PM to remove hurdles to investment

NEW DELHI: India Inc today asked Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to clear hurdles facing large projects and create an environment for investment driven growth, that has taken a battering due to external and internal factors.

Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani, ICICI Bank MD and CEO Chanda Kochhar, HDFC Chairman Deepak Parekh, along with heads of leading industry chambers brainstormed with the Prime Minister the problems facing the country.

Others who attended the meeting include Rahul Bajaj, Narayana Murthy, Azim Premji, Swati Piramal, Deepak Parekh, Jamshyd N Godrej, Venu Srinivasan, Sunil Kant Munjal, S Gopalakrishnan and Sunil Bharti Mittal, among others.

The high-level meeting of the Prime Minister's Council on Trade and Industry was attended by Finance Minister P Chidambaram, Commerce and Industry Minister Anand Sharma and PMEAC Chairman C Rangarajan, among others.

Prime Minister wanted a report within a month on what could be done in the next 2-3 months to revive growth.

"We have given suggestion in two categories, one for near term and one for longer run. For near term, we have suggested clearing of large projects and those projects which were cleared should now be executed," Ficci President and HSBC India head Naina Lal Kidwai said after the meeting that lasted 160 minutes.