The Hindu Business Line : Sunil Mittal defends organised retail

While addressing his maiden press conference as the President of the chamber on Friday, Mr Mittal, Chairman and Group CEO, Bharti Enterprises, said: "The retail industry in the country will grow to $500 billion in the next 10 years from the existing $300 billion, while organised retail would only account for $100 billion, so the unorganised sector would also witness growth."

CEOs' Salaries

As far as the mom-and-pop stores are concerned, there was international evidence that this kind of retail format is not wiped out because of the presence of large stores, he said.

"The number of mom-and-pop stores increased by 2 per cent in the US despite the presence of Wal-Mart," he added.

Allaying apprehensions that organised retail would lead to job loss, Mr Mittal said that such format of retail would require lot of people for packing, labelling, managing customers in stores apart from other duties.

On the Prime Minister's remarks on high remuneration to CEOs, Mr Mittal said that there should be some co-relation between the size of a company and the salaries of its employees.

He, however, said that the CEOs' salaries could not be legislated.

There is shortage of skills in key areas, especially in the services industry that is seeing high salaries. But the cases of high salaries are few, he said.

On the issue of land acquisition for the special economic zones, Mr Mittal said the existing rehabilitation policies were not sufficient and the Government needs to look at it in a more holistic manner.

"There are aspirations among those who are giving up their land to be stake holders in the projects and their aspirations should be respected," said Mr Mittal.

He said the CII would work with the Government to ensure that the farmers' plight was minimised in this regard.

Reservation

On the affirmative action agenda of the chamber, he said that the industry would provide education and entrepreneurship development opportunities to the persons of backward classes.

But the competitiveness of the industry could not be compromised by providing reservation to SCs and STs, he said.

For the development of the infrastructure in the country, Mr Mittal said a massive chunk of the investment has to come from the Government.

"The international experience is that 20 per cent comes from the private sector. Although India is taking a step further in public-private partnership model, a huge chunk still needs to come from the Government," he said.

Deregulation

He also said Government's deregulation of the energy, mining and food product sectors would unleash about 1-1.5 per cent GDP growth locked in these sectors.

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