India continues to be on the economic upswing, but the growth is mainly jobless as a labour intensive boom has not occurred so far, General Electric India President and CEO Scott Bayman said on Thursday.
The number of engineering graduates are increasing and India has the largest working population that will remain young until 2050, he said at a CII annual conference.
However, wealth must be created before it can be distributed in order to deal with the social issues that do exist in India and for which more needs to be done, he added.
“It is India’s time and India’s future is coming into focus,” he said adding, India’s advantages vis—vis China in terms of a much more efficient use of capital, the presence of a well-regulated financial system, a well-entrenched private sector and the presence of world-class executives.
Highlighting four main events, Mr Bayman said that the telecom revolution, confidence of the Indian Industry, presence of Indian consumers and civil aviation indicates India’s spectacular growth story of the recent decade. He said the public-private partnership will help revamp airports and that the consumers have already started to benefit.
Quoting a Grant Thorton study, he said the industry has been witness to 72 international takeovers amounting to $24 billion. Indian companies no longer talk about a level-playing field but are now thinking global.
These four big events showed that India is part of the changing world order, both politically as well as economically, he said. India should be seen as a bridge between the Middle East and Russia on one hand and the Asia Pacific region on the other was his view.