Centre consults more top corporates, Goyal meets Premji

To boost private investment for reviving the sagging economy, the Centre on Friday continued with the consultation process with top corporate leaders. Accordingly, IT major Wipro's Founder Chairman Azim Premji met with Commerce & Industry Minister Piyush Goyal here on Friday.

Reportedly, the meeting was a part of the government's outreach efforts to seek inputs from the industry to understand their concerns and requirements.

Prior to this meet, the minister had earlier this week met with Tata Sons Chairman N. Chandrasekaran and Bharti Group's Chairman Sunil Bharti Mittal.

According to sources, Premji put across the concerns of the IT sector and the certain future investment plans of the company.

The meeting was held under the Project Management Cell (PMC) with the aim to understand the challenges such as regulations and liquidity conditions faced by the corporates in expanding operations. Consequently, the boost in private investment is expected to lead to employment generation and demand augmentation, thereby reversing the cycle of de-growth.

The government expects the private sector to play a major role in employment generation as it exits from various PSUs and hands over the management control to strategic investors.

The development assumes significance as the economy is facing stagflation, an economic trend marked by rising inflation and falling Gross Domestic Product.

Especially distressing is the fact that a subdued consumption trend, along with a massive contraction in manufacturing, agriculture and mining activities, has pulled India's GDP growth rate down to 4.5 per cent in the second quarter of 2019-20.

This is the slowest GDP growth rate in around six years. The growth on a year-on-year basis during Q2 2018-19 had stood at 7 per cent.

Economy watchers have blamed subdued demand, high taxation, low job creation, stagnant wages and stressed rural sector for creating the economic slowdown. Sectors such as automobile, consumer durables and capital goods have come under heavy pressure due to the slowdown.

Incidentally, the move comes as the Reserve Bank of India has taken a surprise "temporary pause" in reducing key lending rates to keep retail inflation in check.IANS