India has been the top international investor in Britain for three consecutive years, union finance minister Pranab Mukherjee said here Saturday.
Talking to media persons, the finance minister said: "European nations have taught us industrialization in the last 150 years. But now, the economic scenario has been reversed. India has been among the top international investors in the United Kingdom and is hence providing employment to Britons."
Mukherjee was talking to media after delivering the keynote address as the chief guest at the convocation of the Institute of Management & Technology here.
In a speech that lasted almost two hours, Mr. Mukherjee didn’t once mention, as far as I could hear, the phrase “economic reform.” There was a passing reference to opening up multi-brand retail to FDI, a plan that was shelved after opposition from the government’s own allies. But all he said was that the government would consult with the stakeholders and try to build a “consensus” around the policy proposal. That’s a tactful way of saying that nothing is likely to happen.
The central portion of the speech consisted of a long series of spending plans laid out by the finance minister. There’s no two ways about it: this was old-fashioned red-blooded populism, a budget laying out the goodies in advance of what is likely to be a difficult run-up to the elections due in 2014. Normally, governments in Westminster-style parliamentary democracies reserve the pre-election goodies for the year before an election.
But given the battering the Congress Party has taken in the recent state assembly elections, still reeling from a string of corruption scandals last year, it’s evident that Mr. Mukherjee has decided to pull out the stops and deliver a pre-election budget this year, fully two years ahead of the expected election date.
