India should sign more FTAs, cut tariffs: Niti CEO

New Delhi, May 17

India needs to sign many more free trade agreements (FTAs) with other countries and reduce tariffs to compete with the rest of the world, Niti Aayog CEO BVR Subrahmanyam said on Friday.

Addressing the captains of the Indian industry at a CII Annual Business Summit, Subrahmanyam said the government should not protect any sector from competition. “I think we should be very, very confident about our capabilities about India actually being able to be competitive with the rest of the world,” he said.

Subrahmanyam also noted that there has to be a concerted effort to make India part of global value chains. “To get into global value chains means a fundamental change in a lot of things. It means low tariffs, low procedures and no protectionism,” he said.

Highlighting the need for reforms in financial services, he said India needs its own JP Morgans and Citibanks and that requires a very, very forward-looking thinking.

“We need much bigger banks, we need much more global players and we need a financial sector which has the muscle to service firms not just in India but across the world,” he said. Pointing out the industrial transformation unleashed after the 1991 economic reforms, he said 90 per cent of the companies that exist today are here in their size because of what happened then. — PTI

Ramp up manufacturing

Addressing the captains of the industry in New Delhi, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Friday said the country needed to ramp up its manufacturing sector to increase its share in the global value chain and become ‘Atmanirbhar’. She also underlined the policy support to attain this objective.