Prime
Minister Manmohan Singh will kick start the India-UK
Investment Summit tomorrow. CNBC-TV18 reports on what
investors and business leaders there think of the opportunities
in both countries.
Infrastructure
continues to be the biggest challenge as far as foreign
investors are concerned. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh
has set a target of $320 billion to bridge the infrastructure
deficit. While that figure has heartened foreign investors,
they are uncertain about the pace of building that deficit.
Ian
Gomes, Senior Partner at KPMG says, "$320 billion
is what we need, but the issue is how quickly is it
coming and how quickly is it being deployed. I think
we are moving at a pace, which we comfortable with in
India for example. But to really reap the benefits of
FDI, we have got to move at a faster pace."
While
FDI inflows may be slow to come in, what about FII inflows?
Has the appetite decreased as far as the Indian markets
are concerned because of high valuations and uncertainties?
Ravi Mattu, MD and global head of equity of Lehman Brothers
says, "We see tremendous opportunity especially
in the secondary market from the overseas investors.
So one can build a business just servicing global hedge
funds and global investors based in India."
"The
big challenges are to build a local market whether
that is a mutual fund industry or insurance industry
or to create financing for infrastructure," he
added.
There
is a huge interest as far as the India story is concerned.
But from
a UK point of view, key sectors like financial services,
the retail space, as well as legal services continue
to be closed to FDI. Until it is more liberalised we
will not see a flood of pounds coming in.
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