Several leading members of US industry called on Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi on Tuesday and briefed him on the outcomes of India Leadership Summit held in the capital earlier in the day.
The delegation was led by US-India Strategic Partnership Forum’s President and CEO Mukesh Aghi.
Former US ambassador to India Richard Verma and other business leaders like Robert E. Moritz, Michael H. Train, Sanjiv Puri, Nandita Bakhshi, John Kern, Ajay Singh, Amit Midha, Sanjay Nayar, Rajesh Subramaniam, Sanjay Bhatnagar, Pratyush Kumar, Muna Bhanji, Rohan Mahadevan, Ari Sarker, Rajan Anandan, Harvinder Singh among others.
Prime Minister’s Office said: “The business leaders…expressed their desire to further deepen their engagements with India to make use of the mutually beneficial opportunities created by the rapidly growing Indian economy.”
Mukesh Aghi, President and CEO of US-India strategic partnership forum said: “US companies contributed over $90 billion USD to India’s GDP in 2017 and more than 6.6 million jobs are supported by the US companies in India.”
Talking about the foreign direct investment, Mukesh Aghi said that US was India’s largest trading partner and top export market and also top Source of FDI for the country with $50 billion USD worth of FDI flows between 2014 and first quarter of 2018.
He said that US companies invested over $5.5 billion USD in R&D in India in 2016 and US companies contributed to over 5% of total CSR expenditure in India in 2017.
Prime Minister Modi told the delegation that both countries have benefitted in an unprecedented manner through economic engagement and he also encouraged US companies to fully avail of the business opportunities in new areas as well, such as start-ups, energy, health care and digital technology.
