Kumar Mangalam Birla praises PM Modi for improving 'ease of doing business'

Chairman of Aditya Birla Group Kumar Mangalam Birla on Friday praised Prime Minister Narendra Modi led Central government for facilitating 'ease of doing business' in India.

In an exclusive interview to ANI, Kumar Mangalam Birla said: "I think the fact is that business has become transparent and much less corrupt."

Birla, who was in Thailand to mark the 50th anniversary of his group's entry into the country, said: "If I can be blunt about it, it's a huge devour shift for doing business in India."

"It causes short term pain to several people, but I'm sure that in the long term and even in the medium term, it cleans out a lot of clogged systems," he said.

Recently India recorded a jump of 14 positions to the 63rd among 190 countries as per the World Bank. India has appeared among top-10 improvers for the third time in a row.

On India's ranking, Birla praised the current government and said that the country can do even better.

"I think we can do even better, but we must remember that doing business in India means in most cases, working with the state and Central governments on a particular project," he said.

"And given the fact that we are such a large country, it makes it a little more challenging but having said that, I can see the coordination between states and the Central governments on dealing with projects is now much better than in the past," he added.

Speaking about the prevailing state of employment in the country, Birla said: "I think employment has to come back with new investment. Indian corporates have been slow to invest in the last five-six years."

"The reason behind it has been the fact that several corporates are laden with debt. I think the focus has been on reducing debt to free up space in the balance sheet. It will take another couple of years in my sense before you can see large investments happening by Indian corporates again," said Birla.