There are two or three things we look for in a summit like the India Economic Summit. One is to communicate to the international participants and even, frankly, to the Indian participants face to face, what the state of play is in India. Where are we on reforms, where are we held up, what are the challenges, what have we achieved. At the end of the meeting there is an agenda for future action which we present to the government. So there is an output from this meeting, so that everyone knows in a documented form where we stand. We also want foreign investment to come into India. We are not doing well in getting foreign investment--we are at about $3-4 billion a year which is chicken feed for an economy like this, and this meeting is useful because it is entirely focused on the promotion of foreign investment into India. So whether you're discussing power or IT, at the end of the day the central focus is foreign investment. I think this [India Economic Summit] is a meeting that has built its own credibility over the last 17 years. It attracts people, there is a lot of learning for everybody, and the final point is there is a lot of networking--foreign participants with Indian participants, foreign participants with each other.

What are the prospects for the world economy?

The US economy has such a major impact on the global economy and on what happens to growth and recession. I see the US economy still a year away from recovery, which will continue to impact world trade. Therefore, many economies which were growing very rapidly, like Singapore, are severely affected.

Indian growth has slowed down as well. We need to focus on our reforms and our implementation so that we can fuel growth. We are dependent on the domestic market much more than we are on the international, which is why the international slowdown has not driven us into recession--we've gone down from 6 percent to 5 percent annual growth. If we continue with reforms and implementation efficiently, we can keep growing. The overall world economy can only pick up, however, once the US economy picks up and that looks at least a year away.

India is still experiencing relatively high growth, but industrial growth is down. Why is that?

When you look at the industrial index it really reflects the slowdown of manufacturing. The manufacturing industry is dependent on infrastructure, but infrastructure projects are not going ahead so manufacturing is not going ahead. Two large segments of the economy--power and railways--have slowed down enormously and that has impacted all the people who make power equipment, railway equipment or provide services to these sectors. There is no demand domestically and there is no demand from outside either because of the slowdown. As soon as infrastructure picks up--you see a couple of power projects, you see the railways moving, more highway construction happening--we'll be back to industrial growth. Infrastructure investment is the key to higher growth in India.

What attracts foreign companies to India?

Companies are moving into India, some moving their back offices here, because of our skills, our competitiveness, our costs. General Electric has set up its largest technology development center for Global GE in Bangalore. They're going to be employing 1000 Indian PhDs. The only other center GE has like this is in New York state. So they're not talking about low skills and labor intensive work. This is high-tech, high-level research work to be done by Indian engineers and scientists. Unilever has also set up its global R&D center in Bangalore. Why are they doing this? Because we've got amazing people available to work.

But don't all the profits leave the country? Is this benefiting Indians by employing people, or is there a further benefit?

There are several multinationals expanding their investments into India. In the case of one multinational they are heading for an investment of $1 billion. Now that investment is here, we're developing assets. People are being employed and their quality of life is being improved. I think it's wrong to think that these companies take all the money out of the country--they plough back a lot. They have to finance expansion. Gone are the days when you invest in India just to take the money out. That you do if you have a short-term perspective, if this is a one-night stand. But India's not a country for one-night stands, India's a country for the long haul. That's what people complain about, the bureaucracy, red tape etcetera. When it's for the long haul, India benefits. Where will Enron take its power station? A two-thousand mega watt power project--it's a national asset, forget who owns it. We need power, we need it to be generated and distributed, we need it as a reasonable cost. Enron also built a 60-kilometer highway, they built a township, they built a hospital, all of which are now national assets. This we sforget in the process of bashing multinationals, of bashing Enron, we forget that they've created a world class asset for India. And whenever people say they're anti-this, anti-that, I ask them "What are you pro?" Because what's the solution? Give me a solution. Don't talk about what is wrong, talk about how to do it. If this is wrong, fine. How do you do it? We need jobs in this country--if we get a billion dollars of investment we'll create so many jobs. That's what we want, we want to create 10 million jobs a year.