India Inc should focus on acquiring mineral assets abroad : Katju

Vivek Katju, former secretary of Union ministry of external affairs, stressed on the need of Indian companies to invest in natural resources abroad to secure raw material for domestic factories as India is set to become a manufacturing hub.

"As India becomes a base for manufacturing, it will need greater natural resources to feed the factories that will come up. These resources lie in Africa and in Latin America. It is the Chinese who have moved into these continents in a major way to buy or otherwise tie up and control natural assets there. China's large financial reserves have been deployed for these purpose. There has been some interest shown by the Indian companies but they have been mostly diffident," said Katju at the 14th edition of Nalco's (National Aluminium Company) foundation day lecture series.

The theme for the lecture was Foreign Policy: Challenges and Prospects.

This aspect should not be overlooked by those responsible for the Make in India initiative, he said, adding, Indian companies should be more active abroad to acquire natural resource properties.

He hoped that the Indian government would do well in building up relation with and paying greater attention to African and Latin American nations, as it has done in the case of Arab world.