US President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Narendra Modi will spend close to two hours with industrialists from the two countries on Monday evening, discussing their concerns and sharing with them their vision for future economic cooperation.
“The India-US CEO Forum followed by the India-US Business Summit will give businesses the opportunity to closely interact with the two leaders for almost two hours on ways to increase bilateral trade and investment flows,” a government official told BusinessLine .
Obama and Modi, who will speak for about five minutes each at the CEO Forum reacting to issues raised by Chief Executive Officers, will give longer speeches at the Business Summit.
Obama, on the other hand, is likely to touch upon the importance of policy stability for attracting US investments, need to encourage innovation through strong intellectual property regime and the contribution made by Indian companies in the US.
Commerce and Industry Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, US Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker and Department of Industrial Policy & Promotion (DIPP) Secretary Amitabh Kant will also attend both meetings.
While the co-chairs of the India-US CEO forum, Tata Group’s Cyrus Mistry and Honeywell’s David Cote, will give detailed presentations on what each country’s industry wants, at least five CEOs each from both countries would also briefly speak on issues important for their respective sectors.
India is working out the possibility of accommodating more speakers, the official added. Speakers from the US are likely to include McGraw Hill Company’s Harold Terry Mc Graw, PepsiCo’s Indra Nooyi and JP Morgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon.
Indian CEOs who are to deliver short speeches are RIL’s Mukesh Ambani, ICICI Bank’s Chanda Kochhar, Infosys’s Vishal Sikka, Bharti Enterprises Sunil Bharti Mittal, HDFC’s Deepak Parekh, and Biocon’s Kiran Majumdar Shaw.
“The US wants that only the core members of the India-US CEO forum should speak. However, there are so many others from India who wish to be accommodated,” another official said.
Issues of concern Other CEOs from prominent Indian companies to attend the meet include Adani Group’s Gautam Adani, Essar’s Shashi Ruia, Mahindra Group’s Anand Mahindra, SBI chairperson Arundhati Bhattacharya, ONGC’s DK Saraf, BHEL’s DP Rao and Apollo’s Preetha Reddy.
US businesses are likely to share their concerns on issues such as retrospective taxation, import restrictions, local sourcing, protection of intellectual property and impediments in ease of doing business.
The Indian side, on the other hand, will talk about visa problems faced in the US, the need to finalise a social security agreement and discouraging ‘Buy American’ programmes followed by several American states.
Correction
An earlier version said the US delegation included Citigroup's Vikram Pandit and United Tech Corporation’s Louis Chenevert. This copy has been corrected to remove the reference to Citigroup and United Tech. Also, Vikram Pandit quit Citigroup in 2012. The error is regretted.