Asserting that his government has been working relentlessly to put the economy back on track, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday explained what all has been achieved by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) led NDA govt over the last 18 months or so while addressing a business meeting in London:

1. Particularly, we have worked very aggressively to make India an easy and simple place to do business. We believe that this is necessary for improving the lives of ordinary citizens in India. Government is working on all fronts to make India a global manufacturing hub. To achieve this objective, apart from vigorous exercise for ease of doing business, we have fast tracked approvals and clearances for industry and infrastructure. The hall mark of our strategy now is Policy driven Governance. Measures like transparent auction and allocation of key natural resources like coal, spectrum, iron ore have created a level playing field for investors

2. India is among the most open countries for foreign investments. We have also come up with the mechanism of Tax Free Infrastructure Bonds for projects in rail, road and other sectors. We will work together with the British Government, Industry and the financial markets to deepen our relationship and harness their interest in India’s infrastructure. Very soon, these bonds will become strong instruments for engagement between our financial markets.

3. India has emerged as the third largest source of FDI for UK. To enhance the flow of foreign investments, we have liberalized the FDI regime allowing 100 percent FDI in railways. We enhanced the FDI limits to 49 percent in defence and insurance. We are also conscious of the last mile operational issues in such policies. In that spirit, early this week, we have carried out substantial changes in the FDI regime across 15 sectors.

4. India and Britain’s institutions know how to interact with each other; Our people know to work with each other; Our businesses know to grow with each other. That is the reason that UK is among India’s major trading partners.

5. There is significant potential for India and UK to further strengthen their economic ties.

6. We have to effectively leverage the mutual understanding which is there for each other. We are particularly keen to develop the sectors where UK is strong. We are working hard to create conducive conditions for this engagement.

7. A strong Indian community in the UK keeps pushing us for better and better integration with UK.

8. The results of our hard work are now visible. IMF chief has recently said that India is among few bright spots in global economy today. Our growth rate in the last year was 7.3.

9. World Bank has very recently projected India’s growth rate at 7.5 percent for this fiscal and even better in the coming years. Thus, we are fortunate to be sailing in the right direction. In the World Bank Report of 2016 on ease of doing business, India has moved up by 12 ranks at one go. No other country has made such a big improvement.

10. One of the biggest challenges in India today is to productively employ the youth. For meeting this challenge, we need to provide a huge push to manufacturing which has stagnated at around 16% of the GDP for several decades. This share must reach around 25 percent in the short and medium term. With this in view, we have launched the “Make in India” initiative.