The Hindu Business Line : Setback to nuclear deal could hurt FDI inflows: Tata

New Delhi, Aug. 25 The Tata Sons Chairman, Mr Ratan Tata, has said that backtracking on the Indo-US nuclear deal could impact inflow of foreign direct investments to the country.

In an interview to news channel CNN-IBN, Mr Tata said the civil nuclear deal with the US was “in many ways the best possible thing that had happened to India in a long time”.

Asked if it would it be a setback if the deal didn’t materialise, he said: “I believe it is a serious setback to India. I believe the only people happy to see this not happening are probably Pakistan and China.” He also said he felt “there would be repercussions and there would be reactions (if the deal failed to go through)”.

Hitting out at political parties for “opposing for the sake of opposing”, Mr Tata said: “I really do wish we could go back to the days when we had stronger coalitions or single parties in Government and a two-party system in the House, where you really dealt with issues and serious ideologies.”

Mr Tata, whose Rs 1 lakh car project at Singur is facing stiff political opposition, however, lauded the West Bengal Chief Minister, Mr Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, and said it was because of the latter that the company had not moved out of the State.

“A lesser person would have succumbed to the political pressures. And let me tell you what that would have done... I would have just picked up my stakes and gone to another State. Three, four States are wooing us for that project,” he said.

“If I had a Chief Minister who was going to risk his political position to stand by what he had promised, then I was going to stand with him also,” Mr Tata said.

Open economy

On his wish list for the economy, Mr Tata said the financial services needed to be opened up, while putting up a few constraints on market share so that domestic firms do not get dominated by foreign companies. “India needs to be a more open financial economy. Therefore financial services, banking, insurance needs to be opened up.”

Asked if the Government had talked more about reform than it has delivered, Mr Tata said: “To some extent that could be true. It has been very vocal on reform.” He, however, quickly added that the Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, “has genuinely and seriously wanted to see the reform take place… I think the political system has not allowed delivery of that reform to take place”.

Confirming that the Tatas were interested in acquiring Land Rover and Jaguar from Ford Motors, Mr Tata said, “We certainly have an interest in that.”

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