Newly elected CII president KV Kamath on Thursday said the recent derivative losses faced by banks is a learning experience for them. Kamath, who is the managing director and CEO of ICICI Bank, which also registered losses on account of derivative transactions, said the country needed to create financial institutions of bigger scale and size to support a growth rate of 10%, which the government was aiming at.
In an interview with FE after assuming charge as the president of the apex chamber, Kamath said if the country was to grow at 10% then the financial sector needed to grow at twice its current growth rate. He said the fifth largest bank of China was bigger than the top five banks of India.
Kamath has identified skilling as his key agenda and this would be the theme of the year for CII. He said just as inflation needed to be tackled by removing the supply-side constraints, developing skills in the manpower would help the corporate India maintain profitability. ?Corporate India can?t sustain 14-15% wage increment every year,? Kamath said, adding that this was happening because companies were poaching skilled manpower of each other due to shortage.
The CII president said the curriculum right from high school to the 12th standard needed revision both in the rural and urban areas as it is no longer in sync with the times. Vocationalisation in sync with the job market is the need of the time. He said there were enough reports prepared by expert committees available with the government and what is now required is to summarise them by taking the good points from all of them and prepare a road map for implementation.
Kamath stressed on three aspects: creating awareness, bias for action and implementation.
?As per a CRISIL report every white collar job creates four other jobs. We need to identify what are these jobs, map them and prepare right kind of skilled people for them,? Kamath said.
The CII president welcomed the recent monetary policy unveiled by the RBI stating that it had maintained the right balance between tackling inflation and maintaining the growth momentum.
Regarding charges of cartelisation on certain segments of the industry, he said corporates must ask themselves whether their actions in a demand-driven market was causing distress to others.
??The government is sending a clear signal. We have to respond,?? he said. He said his predecessor Sunil Bharti Mittal has already said that CII ?abhors? cartelisation. ??That?s our response??. The industry must respond to the call given by the government to join it in the fight against inflation, he added.