Speed Up Reforms To Take Advantage Of Cooperation: CEO Forum

Australia and India have various significant complementarities in the strengths of the two countries, and a strong desire to harness these towards substantially enhancing bilateral trade and investment. In this direction high quality, mutually beneficial Australia-India Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement (CECA) is of prime importance. Governments of both the countries have to take advantage of this platform and should be bold and ambitious in their approach. It is of prime importance that Indian government should speed up economic and regulatory reforms to take full advantage of this economic co-operation.

These are the assertion of Australia-India CEO forum, which met top government officials including Prime Minister Narendra Modi yesterday. The meeting was attended by Australian Minister for Trade and Investment Andrew Robb, Forum co-chairs, Mr Gautam Adani, Chairman of the Adani Group, and Mr Sam Walsh, Chief Executive of the Rio Tinto Group. This meeting was an extension of the agreement reached between PMs of two countries recently. Forum is aggressively working on executing the mutual agreements reached during the recent visit of PM to Australia. “We are confident that the respective strengths of our two economies provide a solid base for an ambitious CECA that can deliver new market opportunities, enhance ways to do business, help drive growth, create new jobs and generate greater prosperity for India and Australia,” marks Walsh during the meeting.

While giving importance to India’s energy security Gautam Adani said; “We recognise that the resources sector remains central to development in both countries, and that competitively priced stable supplies of Australian minerals and resources contribute to India’s energy security.  Cooperation between the two countries through such complementary strengths will enhance two-way investment and timely government approvals in this sector can play a strong role in facilitating this.”

Member CEOs welcomed the Indian Government’s introduction of legislation to support a single GST and its increase in Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) caps in the insurance, defence and railways sectors, urging all levels of government to embrace and implement economic and regulatory reforms.