She pointed out that for India, it was the private companies that were going for foreign expansion — unlike the sovereign wealth funds route of Singapore and West Asia. Delineating the services sector to be the engine of growth, she averred that to sustain growth Indian companies needed to move up the value-added ladder by expanding engineering and research and development services. She also emphasised the role of manufacturing in increasing employment.

She hoped that the overall competitiveness of the Indian economy would increase by innovation in high growth sectors under the broader regime of continued liberalisation and reforms. Speaking on the occasion, ABN Amro Bank senior economist Gaurav Kapoor said, “India has shifted in its growth trajectory primarily due to rule-based fiscal rectitude and a savings rate of around 35 per cent.”

He opined that big strides made in infrastructure — mainly telecom and roads — had given impetus to productivity increments. He advocated greater spending on infrastructure to not only maintain but also accelerate the growth rate.

The widely respected newsmagazine, The Economist, regularly holds such roundtables with governments of prominent economies “to build on the inherent strengths of the economies while tackling the challenges of doing business therein”.