Not surprisingly, the buzz around the conference today, as well as during last night's welcome cocktail, was how the Government didn't seem particularly interested in exploiting a golden opportunity to address investor fears. After the sanctions, the Moody's downgrade and the lacklustre budget, foreign institutional investors have been pulling out of India while those interested in manufacturing investment have also been going slow.

While ministry officials, including the Finance Minister, are generally keen toparticipate in such investor conferences, it's different this time around. The Finance Minister didn't wish to attend, and till late last night, Ahluwalia's office said he wasn't coming either. It is believed the PMO stepped in late last night and asked Alhuwalia to represent the Government. Agitated investors said the ministry obviously wasn't too confident of facing them, since it obviously had few good things to say about the economy.

Says Roderick Richards, Natwest Markets' chief representative in India: ``There's very little really happening in India right now -- there are no GDRs, no ADRs, no disinvestment, nothing.'' According to Roberts, it would be fair to say that around half the usual participants in terms of foreign bankers haven't come to this year's Euromoney conference. This would include regulars like BZW, ABN Amro, Credit Lyonaise and the Rotschilds.

In the event, while Ahluwalia was his usual competent self, he could do little to actually help allay investor fears on the impact ofMoody's downgrade, the US sanctions, or the feeling that reforms had suffered grievously after the BJP came to power.

Ahluwalia's primary pitch to investors, eventually, was that India was a better destination than much of south-east Asia with both the rupee and the stock markets more stable. With a few exceptions, they were few takers for this at today's meet Robert Gibson who heads Jardine Fleming's broking setup in India pointed out that India offers wonderful opportunities with the stock market attractively priced.

Gibson, however, pointed out that the Government needed desperately to come up with centrally empowered bodies which can actually ensure that decisions taken actually get converted to actions. ``It's been seven years since the Government has been talking of restructuring the public sector, but we've seen only divestment, and no actual privatisation.'' And, where the budget went two steps forward, it also went one backward, Gibson added. The backtracking on the electricity regulatoryauthority bills -- according to Gibson, sent out terrible signals about the reforms.