India stands tall like Bahubali, Budget 2016 should only boost it: Gautam Adani

NEW DELHI: Global slowdown weighs big on corporate India as Finance Minister Arun Jaitley gets set to announce his Budget on February 29. "It is India that stands firm like Bahubali in an otherwise sluggish global business environment. The general prediction indicates that the world is facing a prolonged economic slowdown with the global GDP growth rate trending to an annual average of 2% over next five years," says Gautam Adani, chairman and founder, Adani Group.

Budget comes at a time when the global economic environment continues to be troubled. India Inc will be looking for signals to revive the investment momentum. While public spending is certainly welcome, a stronger wave of job creation and income growth can come from broadbased industry-led capital expenditure.

Adani wants Jaitley to keep India's firm stand in mind this Budget. "Majority of the economic matrix that matters for the growth of a nation are trending in the right direction for India."

Jaitley said it is important for India to emerge out of the crisis stronger as it is on a much higher and stabler footing than other nations.

"Unpredictability and volatility have become the new global norm. In these circumstances, it is extremely important for India to emerge and emerge out of the crisis even stronger," he said while addressing the Invest Karnataka 2016 summit.

Jaitley said that India is "relatively unimpacted" by some of the factors that have caused the global crisis.

"Lower prices of oil and metal commodities substantially suit us. It indirectly impacts us because it shrinks our exports; it makes our markets more volatile, currency more volatile. But compared to the rest of the world, we are still on a much higher and stabler footing," he said.