By TIOL News Service

NEW DELHI, OCT 09, 2020: THE Prime Minister, Mr Narendra Modi, delivered the keynote address at Invest India Conference in Canada through video conference yesterday.

The Prime Minister said India is undisputedly the only country shining in all their investment parameters like having political stability, investment and business friendly policies, transparency in governance, skilled talent pool and a large market. He said there is an opportunity for everyone including Institutional Investors, manufacturers, supporters of innovation ecosystems and infrastructure companies.

The Prime Minister said in the post-Covid world, India showed resilience and emerged as a land of solutions to overcome various kinds of problems related to manufacturing, supply chains, etc. He added, despite disrupted logistics, money was directly delivered into bank accounts of  over 400 million farmers, women, poor and needy people within a matter of days. He listed various initiatives taken by the Government to overcome the disruption owing to the pandemic and stressed that this shows the strength of governance structures and systems that have been built over the last few years.

The Prime Minister said while the entire country was in a stringent lockdown, India was providing medicine to around 150 countries and play ed the role of the pharmacy to the world. He added d uring March-June of this year, agricultural exports rose by 23%. He said before the pandemic, India hardly manufactured PPE kits but today not only does India manufacture millions of PPE kits every month, it exports them too. He committed to ramping up production and helping the entire world in vaccine production for Covid-19.

The Prime Minister explained how India's story is growing stronger by listing the initiatives of the Government in creating a business friendly environment. He listed initiatives like liberalizing the FDI regime, creat ing a friendly tax regime for Sovereign Wealth and Pension Funds, bringing significant reforms for developing a robust Bond market, Incentive schemes for Champion sectors. He said s chemes in sectors like Pharma, Medical Devices and Electronics Manufacturing are already in operation. He added for ensur ing high-level attention and effective hand-holding for investors, a dedicated Empowered Group of Secretaries has been formed. He emphasized proactive monetiz ation of assets across sectors like Airports, Railways, Highways, Power Transmission lines, etc. He said Real Estate Investment Trusts and Infrastructure Investment Trusts have been fully enabled for monetization of both public and private assets.

The Prime Minister said today India is undergoing a rapid change in mindsets as well as markets. It has embarked on a journey of deregulation and decriminalization of various offences under the companies act. He said India has risen from 81 to 48 in the Global Innovation Index rankings and risen from 142 to 63 in the World Bank's Ease of Doing Business rankings in the last 5 years.

The Prime Minister said due to these improvements, India received around USD 70 Billion from Institutional Investors between January 2019 to July 2020. This is almost equal to that received in four years between 2013 and 2017. He stressed th at continuing confidence of the global investor community in India is seen by the fact that FDI into India went up by 20% in 2019 when global FDI inflows fell by 1%.