by admin | May 25, 2021 | Business, Corporate, Corporate Governance, Investing, Large Enterprise
Hyderabad : Participating in the World Economic Forum (WEF) for the first time, India’s youngest state Telangana is trying to woo investors.
The delegation led by Minister for Information Technology, Industries and Municipal Administration K.T. Rama Rao called on top executives of various companies and business leaders in Davos.
At the state pavilion at WEF, the delegation met the investors and briefed them of the enormous opportunities Hyderabad and other parts of the state offer.
The minister met Petra Laux, Head Global and Public Affairs, Novartis. Rao tweeted that expansion of Novartis in Hyderabad was among the issues discussed.
He also explained the progress of Hyderabad Pharma City, a state-of-the-art facility coming up with a university and research centre.
KTR, as the minister is popularly known, also met delegation from Mitsubishi Heavy Industries led by Ken Kawai, Executive Vice President
He also called on Aloke Lohia, founder and group CEO, Indorama Ventures PCL, the world’s largest polyester company by capacity.
During the meeting, the minister explained about the Telangana’s progressive industrial policies and also the existing textiles ecosystem in the state.
He invited Aloke Lohia to explore investment opportunities in Kakatiya Mega Textiles Park coming up in Warangal.
With AirAsia Berhad’s CEO Anthony Fernandes and Deputy CEO Aireen Omar, KTR discussed the prospects of setting up AirAsia’s Tech Center and running innovation programmes to support startups in the aerospace sector.
KTR, who is Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao’s son, tweeted that he also had a brief but scintillating meeting with Chairman of RIL, Mukesh Ambani.
Earlier, the minister also met Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu and his son and cabinet minister Nara Lokesh.
KTR is scheduled to speak at a few sessions at WEF. He will participate in the discussion titled ‘Leveraging digital to deliver value to society’ on January 25. He will also participate in the roundtable on “Promoting design in India” organised by Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion.
The next day, he will speak at the session titled ‘Global Tech, Local Solutions: Artificial Intelligence.’
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Business, Economy, Employment, News
New Delhi : With growth in international arrivals in India, there would be a creation of approximately one million additional jobs, according to a World Economic Forum (WEF) report.
As India prepares to launch the Incredible India 2, the report put forward few recommendations, including the importance of public-private cooperation in its execution, and suggesting that advantage be taken of the unexplored 6,00,000 villages with their own culture and heritage, ecotourism and cruise tourism to create unique experiences for travellers.
Another recommendation was to integrate the Incredible India campaign into a holistic campaign that includes not only print but also other channels, such as digital, social, placement, review sites and global media, focussing on the positives of visitor-created content while addressing the challenges these visitors say.
Taking advantage of the labour force available in India to provide a quality product to tourists and enhancing the perception and reality of India as a safe destination were other recommendations.
Several top names from the Indian travel and aviation industry have contributed towards the findings in the report, the WEF said in a statement on Wednesday.
“The industry is people focused and the quality of its people defines the value of the product. Hence the need to train and educate staff is acute here”, said Aditi Balbir, one of the contributors to the report.
He observed that the industry had the power to create jobs across the economy at various skill levels, and for the marginalized sectors of the society.
The WEF white paper also recommends a proposal to create a Tourism Board.
“Currently, India’s travel and tourism industry is fragmented and lacks a unified public-private body to represent the industry, in turn hindering its ability to achieve its potential.
“This board could support enhancing industry coordination, public-private sector initiatives and enacting change through policy recommendations,” it said.
It noted that India welcomed nine million international travellers in 2016 and its domestic demand nearly touched the 100 million mark, adding India is effectively one of the fastest growing aviation markets in the world and according to the Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Report 2017, one of the most improved nations, reaching 40th position compared to 65th in 2013.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Opinions
By Amit Kapoor,
In a respite to the Modi government, which has been facing the heat over dismal economic numbers, the World Economic Forum (WEF) study on global competitiveness for 2017 commended the improving quality of institutions in India, especially in terms of improved efficiency of public spending in the last few years. This was despite the fact that India slipped a place to rank 40 out of a total 137 countries in the Global Competitiveness Index 2017-18.
However, the WEF has clarified that it has changed its methodology this year and the rankings are not comparable with those of last year. Moreover, it also pointed out that this is India’s highest score ever with the new methodology (4.6 compared to 4.5 in the previous year). The country’s score has improved across most indicators of competitiveness, especially infrastructure (66th, an improvement of two points over last year), higher education and training (75th, up six) and technological readiness (107, up two), which is a reflection of recent public investment in these areas.
India has also ranked the highest among all South Asian countries with the next highest being Bhutan and Sri Lanka ranked at 85. Among the BRICS nations, China (27) and Russia (38) rank above India while South Africa and Brazil are placed at 61 and 80. In a major hopeful boost to the dwindling India growth story, the report stated that among the emerging markets that were seen to have great potential in the early 2000s, Brazil and Turkey have lost much of what they had gained before 2013, while China, India and Indonesia continue to grow strong.
The report also gives some useful insights about the growth trends of the Indian economy. First, among the emerging economies, it finds that India and China are gradually developing into major centres of innovation. In a recent study of geographical clusters generating the most patents, three Indian cities appeared in the top 100 with Bengaluru at 43 (with patent activity focused on computer technology), Mumbai at 95 and Pune at 96 (with both registering among the most patents in organic chemistry). Due to such an improvement in the innovative environment within India, the WEF rankings place India at 29 on the innovation pillar for competitiveness.
Since innovation is a major determinant of the long-term growth trends of an economy, these figures bode well for India’s future prospects. However, the improvement comes with a caveat. It has been seen that emerging economies that are doing well in innovation are leaving large sections of the population behind since they are not technologically equipped.
The level of technological readiness of individuals and firms in countries like India and China are relatively low. This indicates that the innovative space in these countries is not quite inclusive in nature. Along with innovation, it is necessary to ensure that more people and firms have the required means to access and make use of the new technology. India fares poorly on that front. As mentioned, India ranks a lowly 107 in technological readiness. As long as there remains such a disconnect between technological strength and technological readiness, the gains from it cannot be shared across the wider economy and will only lead to an unequal society. So, India urgently needs to act upon technological readiness to make its economy competitive on a larger scale.
The second insight from the Global Competitiveness Index is the performance of the health and primary education pillar, in which India ranks at 91 — second-worst only to technological readiness. It cannot be overstated how poor health and education outcomes can affect the competitiveness of a country and its citizens. India has always had a history of poor public investment in health and primary education and it pays a hefty cost for this in terms of its competitiveness. Such a continued trend in the long run will result in an unequal and mostly unproductive society where only the well-off, who manage to provide nutrition and education for their children, will thrive.
Thirdly, the WEF Executive Opinion Survey reveals that the private sector still considers corruption to be the most problematic factor for doing business in India. This finding puts a question mark over the effectiveness of the government’s attack on corruption over the last few years. Lack of access to financing and tax regulations also remain the prime problems for setting up a business in India. The former might gradually subside when the problems of non-performing assets (NPAs) with banks is remedied, while the latter might change once the economy adjusts to the newly-implemented Goods and Services Tax (GST). However, corruption will continue to remain an impediment to the country’s competitiveness and its long-term growth.
Therefore, India might be improving on the competitiveness index owing to high public investment in some crucial sectors, but large ailments within the economy still remain. Problems of corruption and a gross negligence of health and education sectors have always defined India’s competitiveness. A recent growth in innovative tendencies seemed to be a saving grace but as it turns out, there seem to be distributive issues. How India handles these concerns will determine its future.
(Amit Kapoor is Chair, Institute for Competitiveness, India. The views expressed are personal. He can be contacted at amit.kapoor@competitiveness.in and tweets @kautiliya. Chirag Yadav, researcher, Institute for Competitiveness, India, contributed to the article.)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Economy, News
Geneva : India has been placed at 103 rank on the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Global Human Capital Index, which is topped by Norway.
Among the South Asian countries, India falls behind Sri Lanka (70) and Nepal (98), and is just ahead of Bangladesh (111) and Pakistan (125). The country has the lowest rank among the BRICS nations — the Russian Federation is at 16th place, followed by China at 34th, Brazil at 77th and South Africa at 87th place, the WEF said.
India stands at the bottom of the heap among the G20 nations, the report said.
India also ranks poorly on labour force participation, due in part to one of the world’s largest employment gender gaps. However, it received solid rankings on education quality, staff training and economic complexity.
India was on 105 position on the list last year, while the top spot was taken by Finland, pushed to second place this year.
The Global Human Capital Index 2017 has ranked 130 countries on how well they are developing their human capital on a scale from 0 (worst) to 100 (best) across four thematic dimensions — capacity, deployment, development and know-how — and five distinct age groups or generations — 0-14 years; 15-24 years; 25-54 years; 55-64 years; and 65 years and over — to capture the full human capital potential profile of a country.
The WEF list takes into account “the knowledge and skills people possess that enable them to create value in the global economic system” to measure the ‘human capital’ rank of a country.
Other countries in the top 10 list are — Switzerland (3rd), the United States (4th), Denmark (5th), Germany (6th), New Zealand (7th), Sweden (8th), Slovenia (9th) and Austria (10th).
—IANS
