‘Need climate for investment’

A day after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh laid threadbare the economic realities of the country in an address to the nation, he has called for creating an environment conducive for investment.

Addressing a conference on economic growth in Asia and changes of corporate environment on Saturday, he also pitched for fair and effective regulatory institutions. He also committed making the domestic corporate laws relevant to the challenges of the future.

“We must build a climate that attracts investment and encourages and rewards innovation, and establish fair and effective regulatory institutions and also legal processes. Above all, we have the responsibility to ensure probity, transparency and accountability in processes of governance,” said Singh.

“As Asian governments, we in the government have the responsibility to ensure that corporate laws match up to international standards, that the regulation of our stock exchanges comes up to the expectations of global investors and that our banking and financial sectors are exemplars of both efficiency and stability,” he added.

“The evolving economic space has to be addressed by all organs of the government: the executive, legislature and the judiciary,” he said. The balance between the three may appear to get unsettled at times but it has stood the test of time, he added.

Singh stressed that corporate social responsibility is being seen as a fundamental dimension of the social contract between human beings and therefore sought to be subject to public scrutiny.

He said India too is committed to fine tuning Indian laws relevant in the context of the challenges ahead. “In response to transformational changes of this century, we are examining many of our commercial and corporate laws to make them relevant to the challenges that lie ahead, particularly for ensuring distributive equities and empowerment of the marginalised sections of our society,” said Singh.