U.S. Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew meets Arun Jaitley

U.S. Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew met Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in New Delhi for the fifth India-U.S. Economic and Financial Partnership Dialogue on Thursday.

The dialogue will focus on capital market reforms and economic policies between the two countries.

Lew, who is on a two-day visit to India, met leading business heads in Mumbai on Wednesday at the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and US-India Business Council Roundtable.

Lew said India and U.S could deepen capital markets to unlock domestic resources and welcome foreign investment into New Delhi, strengthen financial regulatory reform, improve coordination on tax issues and combat money laundering and terrorist financing.

Some of the country's prominent business leaders that Lew met included Adi Godrej of Godrej group, Anil Ambani of the Reliance Group and Mahindra and Mahindra's Anand Mahindra etc.

Lew remarked that India and U.S. were two important drivers of global growth.

This comment from Lew came two days after India became the fastest growing major economy in the world after its statisticians changed the way they measure Asia's third-largest economy and showed that the country clocked faster growth than China in the December quarter.

Under the new method, the economy expanded 7.5 percent year-on-year during the last quarter, higher than 7.3 percent growth recorded by China in the latest quarter.

Lew's visit comes on the close heels of U.S. President, Barack Obama's India visit last month.

Both sides hope to build enough momentum to forge a relationship that will help balance China's rise by catapulting democratic India into the league of major world powers.