Gautam Adani praises Manmohan Singh, PM Modi: ‘India’s remarkable journey…’

Gautam Adani praised the liberalisation policy tweak in 1991 announced by the then-Finance Minister Manmohan Singh. Adani Group chairman Gautam Adani said that liberalisation policy announced in 1991 laid the foundation for India’s infrastructure story and then the eventual take-off has taken in the last decade. Speaking at a CRISIL event in Mumbai, he said, “If the period between 1991 and 2014 was about putting down the foundations and building the runway the period from 2014 to 2024 has been about the aircraft taking off.” Praising the liberalisation policy tweak announced by the then-Finance Minister Manmohan Singh, he said, “The breaking down of the License Raj meant that the government did away with industrial licensing for most sectors. It eliminated much of the requirement for businesses to obtain government permission to invest, or set prices, or build capacity.” In the last decade, India’s has witnessed significant progress in the infrastructure sector whose ‘single most important catalyst’ is the quality of governance in the country. He said, “India’s remarkable infrastructure journey is fundamentally rooted in this government’s effectiveness in institutionalizing policy for transforming our nation’s landscape—from one of challenges—to one of possibilities.” Comparing this to an ‘aircraft taking off’, Gautam Adani spoke of the National Infrastructure Pipeline (NIP) and said that its core essence “is its integrated approach involving participation from both the public and private sectors with the funding model divided between the two. I consider the NIP program that has earmarked a projected investment of Rs. 111 lakh crore over the period FY20-25 as a benchmark of how a government can put in place a national view of over 9,000 infrastructure projects across sectors like energy, logistics, water, airports, and social infrastructure.” Gautam Adani also said that the Adani Group intends to invest over a $100 billion in the energy transition space. “We are confident that we will produce the world’s least expensive green electron that will become the feedstock for several sectors that must meet the sustainability mandate. And to make this happen, we are already building the world’s largest single site renewable energy park in Khavda, in the district of Kutch,” he said