PM to inaugurate CII annual meet on April 3

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will inaugurate the two-day national conference and annual general meeting of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) on April 3 here.  

At least 1,000 industrialists from across the country will attend the meeting. The theme for this year’s deliberations is ‘India tomorrow: Imperatives of growth, security and governance’.

“This year the prime minister is going to attend the inaugural session,” confirmed Chandrajit Banerjee, director general, CII.

CII’s theme comes close to the heels of the country’s growth rate slowing down to almost a four-year low of 4.5 per cent during the October to December quarter of the current financial year, as compared to six per cent during the same period in the previous year.

According to the Central Statistics Advance Estimates, India’s economic growth is likely to fall to a decade low of five per cent in the current financial year.

The prime minister recently said India would come out of the current crisis and would grow by seven to eight per cent in two to three years.

Finance Minister P Chidambaram had said the growth would be over six per cent in the next financial year and revert to seven per cent a year from 2014-15. The Budget assumed the growth to be 6.4 per cent in 2012-13.

Apart from Singh, other invitees include Heavy Industries Minister Praful Patel, leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Arun Jaitley, Planning Commission deputy chairperson Montek Singh Ahluwalia, planning commission member Arun Maira, Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dixit and Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Raman Singh.   

The 1,000-odd industrialists who are expected to come from across the country include Bharti Enterprises Chief Executive Officer Sunil Bharti Mittal, Bajaj Group Chairman Rahul Bajaj, TVS CMD Venu Srinivasan, Wipro chief Azim Premji, Biocon CMD Kiran Mazumdar Shaw and Jubilant’s Hari Bhartia.