Govt should invest money in infrastructure, says Deepak Parekh

HDFC chairman opines that more goodies were not in store as govt targeting lower fiscal deficit

Deepak Parekh, chairman of Housing Development Finance Corporation (HDFC), India's largest mortgage lender, is of the view that the government should invest money in infrastructure sector to drive growth of the country.

“The government has less money and fiscal deficit is large. The government should invest money in infrastructure,” he said.

The Union Budget will be detailed later this month in which Parekh would like to see how the investment cycle is restarted.

“We need more investments on the ground level. What the government has rightly done in the last seven months is that there were large number of stalled projects. The government is very consciously and rightly tackling those and starting those because the money has been invested. It has to just start generating cash flows,” said Parekh.

Parekh attributed AAP's landslide victory in Delhi to vote for a change. “It is a change that people of Delhi had voted for AAP. Kejriwal is a simple individual with good governance and clean governance,” he said.

The government has been targeting a lower fiscal deficit due to which Parekh is of the view that more goodies are not in store. “I don’t think the government is going to give more goodies to people. People will have to work within the budget of Delhi government. Taxes may increase (domestic state and city taxes),” he said.