India Inc calls for opening up of multi-brand retail

Leading industrialists, led by Ratan Tata, Mukesh Ambani and Sunil Mittal, demanded the opening up of multi-brand retail and higher foreign investment in defence production.

The industrialists also called for the speedy rollout of the goods and services tax (GST) and asked for measures to make the country a global manufacturing hub. They were attending the first meeting of the newly constituted Prime Minister’s Council for Trade and Industry on Wednesday.

The meeting was chaired by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and attended by Pranab Mukherjee, finance minister, Anand Sharma, commerce and industry minister and C Rangarajan, chairman of PM’s economic Advisory Council.

Sunil Munjal, Keshub Mahindra, Chanda Kochar, Swati Piramal, Deepak Parekh, Azim Premji, Kiran Mazumdar Shaw and Ashok Ganguly attended the two-hour meeting.

The department of Industrial Policy and Promotion had issued a discussion paper that called for permitting up to 74 per cent foreign investment in defence production. It is in the process of issuing a similar paper on retail.