New Delhi: Batting for liberalisation of the economy, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley welcomed foreign investors to India and expressed concerns over protectionist measures undertaken by other countries.
In an exclusive interview to News18 Network, Jaitley talked about US President Donald Trump's recent decision to make H1B visa costlier.
"I am concerned because once this tendency picks up, all countries would try and play the same game. We have seen from our experience, that opening out has helped us... Among the various things in the last two-and-a-half decades that has helped the Indian economy is the fact that we have become more confident. We are open to investment. We don't think that a foreign investor is coming here to the detriment of the Indian economy. Today, we see him as someone who is bringing in capital which will create jobs in India," Jaitley said.
Citing the example of China banning Google and Facebook in favour of Baidu and WeChat to boost domestic players, Jaitley said, "Have we reached a stage for these kinds of measures or not? I don't know because we haven't really applied ourselves to it because India has not been thinking on these lines."
"We must also remember we are one country in the world. Because of our large population and our large human resource talent, we sent a very large contingent of Indian patriots almost everywhere in the world. Therefore, if you saw the cricket match in New Zealand today, you found more Indians," Jaitley said.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, too, had spoken out against protectionism during his plenary address at the World Economic Forum in Davos last month.
"Forces of protectionism are raising their head against globalisation. Their intention is not only to avoid globalisation themselves but also to reverse its natural flow. The result of all this is that we get to witness new types of tariff and non-tariff barriers,” the PM had said.
Comments
0 comment