Kant wants massive disinvestment

India is showing a political and economical will to usher in the massive development required, said NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant.

“There is a political and economical will to usher India into a landscape of growth and development. With this, the best of India is yet to come!” he said at a special plenary session on “Key Reforms to stimulate innovation at the grassroots” at the ‘The Growth Net Summit’ in New Delhi on 7 June 2019.

The summit organized jointly by Confederation of Indian Industry, Ananta Centre, and Smadja and Smadja brought together global industry experts, policymakers, and international thought leaders to discuss and deliberate on the ways and means to use technology and adopt innovative ways in various fields for India to achieve and sustain higher growth rates.

But Kant pointed out that the current challenge of credit flow primarily because of issues in the NBFC sector.

The way forward is to capitalize banks which will enable them to increase their lending.

“Considering that brown field projects can deliver faster than the green field projects, massive disinvestment and monetization of public assets will help us unleash the animal spirits and bring in private investment, which will contribute to faster growth,” he said.

Kant was confident that in the next five years, the government would be able achieve a major change in mobility.

The target, he said, is to have all three wheelers to be electric by 2023 and all two wheelers by 2025.

Coupled with this, India needs to also improve its public transport facility rapidly to ensure that transport sector is efficient and less polluting.

On urbanization, there is a massive task in hand, considering that every minute 30 people move from the rural area to the urban area, he said.
This needs a complete rethink in the way the country designs cities and manages waste.

There are plenty of examples in Asia to learn from, which have implemented excellent scalable projects, Kant pointed out. fiinews.com