The Asian Age India: As Shell picks China, India Inc. stands united: “Dr Albert Bressand, vice-president, global business environment, Royal Dutch Shell plc, was in Mumbai on Friday, delivering Shell's "Global Scenarios to 2025”: Sunday 11 December 2005

Our Correspondent

Mumbai: Mr Mukesh Ambani and Mr Adi Godrej were some of the corporate majors who rejected Shell's contention that China and the US would be the key decision makers in the year 2025, and that India would only react to the trends set by China globally.

"While China did start its growth process 10 to 15 years before us, India has no speed bumps on its way to growth since the opening up of the markets during the 1990s. China, however, still has to go through the process of democracy and reorganise its financial institutions", said Mr Ambani, chairman and managing director of Reliance Industry Ltd.

Dr Albert Bressand, vice-president, global business environment, Royal Dutch Shell plc, was in Mumbai on Friday, delivering Shell's "Global Scenarios to 2025, the future business environment-trends, trade-offs and choices," to select business majors in India. Shell's scenarios are not forecasts, projections or predictions, but plausible alternative futures that aim to provide reasonable and consistent answers to relevant business questions.

According to Shell, the combination of cheap labour costs, market size and rapid technological modernisation made China, the worlds manufacturing hub. India's IT services sector, however, did not have a broad enough base to achieve full-scale modernisation and the complexity of Indian democracy, made policy reform less effective than in China, but this could provide a more stable foundation for success, assessed Shell.

"India's growth potential is being underestimated. Our capital productivity is higher than China. While India is still burdened by the indirect tax system, we will add one to two per cent to our growth in the next three to five years with reform in the VAT system. India will have a young demography 20 years from now, while China's ageing population will be pushing their demography. India will have the highest growth rate in 10-20 years from now," added Mr Adi Godrej, chairman, Godrej Industries. Mr R. Gopalakrishnan, executive director, Tata Sons, agreed that India will have three billion young entrepreneurs while Europe and Japan will be burdened with an older and ageing population in 20 years time. Industry big-wigs agreed that India's soft power will be to its advantage. 

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© 2005 The Asian Age

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