On the Nation Brand |
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Published on: June 25, 2012 by Aparna Dutt Sharma, Chief Executive Officer, IBEF |
| There has been an improvement in India's position in world ranking of countries in trade logistics due to its implementation of public private partnerships in infrastructure, according to the World Bank. India's Logistics Performance Indicators (LPI) score improved to 3.08 in the Bank's survey on international freight forwarders and express carriers from 3.12 in 2010. According to the Report, "Against others in their income group, the most overperforming non-high income countries are Vietnam, India, China and South Africa". India is expected to occupy sixth position among the top 10 wealth markets in 2012, according to 2012 Global Wealth Market Report by Datamonitor. India, specifically amongst the BRICS comity, would experience robust growth and is expected to reach sixth position by end of 2012. Google has chosen Bengaluru, besides Paris, as one of its main centres for developing products for emerging market, including India, Africa and Latin America. Quick service restaurant chain Subway has plans to open 1,000 stores in India by 2015, which would involve an investment of over Rs 300 cr. Ford India has invested USD 72 million to increase capacity to 340,000 units at the company's Maraimalainagar plant, near Chennai. This expansion has led to an additional 300 jobs. MNC R&D companies are increasingly shifting to tier 2 cities like Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Chandigarh, Coimbatore, Vadodara, Nagpur, Pune and Thiruvananthapuram. Tier 2 cities have become preferred destinations for multinationals like Dell, Nokia, Amazon in addition to their existing centres in main cities. Fresh talent pool in tier 2 cities is projected to form 35 per cent of the Indian R&D workforce in the future. And just last week, IKEA is known to have affirmed its commitment to the Indian market, filing its application for a Euro 1.5 billion investment in a single brand retail in the country. |
This is the news being also recently reported on India. The report, however, which is being treated as defining India's business fate, has been the downgrading by Standard & Poor's and Fitch. Whilst there is no denying that the Indian economy has slowed down, it becomes extremely important as well to look around and do a quick check to see if there are economies that are still marking the kind of growth and showing the kind of resilience that they may have probably a few years ago. The fact remains that whilst inflationary pressures and devaluation of the rupee point to a slowdown of the Indian economy, the status pronounced by Standard & Poor's and lately Fitch represents the extreme end of the spectrum. Businesses are rarely known to make commitments on the basis of sentiments and perceptions alone. The market context, value and opportunity proposition, securities of operations remain amongst the defining factors. The recent commitments and pronouncements made by overseas businesses towards India reiterate the faith in the macro fundamentals and the Indian growth story. Domestic Indian industry has been quick in representing its concerns and has urged for policy interventions at a heightened pace. According to the consulting firm, Zinnov, outlook on the Indian economy is positive and robust, which believes the current phase to be a momentary one, with a promising decade ahead. We tend to share the view.
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