Modi takes stock of global economic turmoil with industry, economists

By NewsGram staff writer

New Delhi: As the global economy looks down the barrel of another impending slowdown, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday met union ministers, corporate heads and economists to discuss the turmoil in the global markets. The latest global turbulence has been sparked off by the Chinese economic slowdown and Modi has sought to discuss attendant opportunities for India.

Among the ministers that were present at the meeting included Arun Jaitley (Finance) Suresh Prabhu (Railways), Nitin Gadkari (Road transport and Shipping), Nirmala Sitharaman (Commerce), Dharmendra Pradhan (Petroleum) and Piyush Goyal (Coal, Power and Renewable Energy).

RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan, Niti Aayog Vice Chairman Arvind Panagariya, Chief Economic Advisor Arvind Subramanian and Aayog member Bibek Debroy also attended the meeting on 'Recent Global Events: Opportunities for India'.
Top officials at the meeting included Economic Affairs Secretary Shaktikanta Das, Financial Services Secretary Anjuly Chhib Duggal, Commerce Secretary Rita Teaotia and Industry Secretary Amitabh Kant.

Eight economists, 14 industry representatives and four major financial institutions, including State Bank of India

chief Arundhati Bhattacharya, ICICI Bank's Chanda Kochar, IDFC's Rajiv Lall and the CEO of the recently- launched Bandhan Bank Chandra Shekhar Ghosh were also present.
Apart from the heads of industry chambers, top industrialists such as Reliance Industries' Mukesh Ambani, Aditya Birla Group head Kumar Mangalam Birla, Adani group chairman Gautam Adani, Tata group chief Cyrus Mistry, Wipro boss Azim Premji, Sun Pharma CMD Dilip Sanghvi, ITC's YC Deveshwar and IL&FS chairman Ravi Parthasarathy also attended.
Public sector enterprises were represented by heavy equipment maker BHEL managing director B Prasada Rao and

gas utility GAIL chairman BC Tripathi.
Aditya Birla group chief economist Ajit Ranade, JP Morgan chief economist Jahangir Aziz and Morgan Stanley's emerging markets head Ruchir Sharma were among the economists and market experts who attended the meeting.

(With inputs from IANS)