Business Daily from THE HINDU group of publications
Friday, Jan 18, 2008
ePaper | Mobile/PDA Version
Business Daily from THE HINDU group of publications Friday, Jan 18, 2008 ePaper | Mobile/PDA Version |
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Money & Banking
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Financial Services Industry & Economy - Foreign Trade Open up financial services more: UK K.R. Srivats New Delhi, Jan 17 India must open up its financial services more than what it is currently, the visiting UK Minister of State for Trade and Investment, Lord Digby Jones, has said. To keep the trade in balance in the coming years, Mr Jones sees the need for some more liberalisation of India’s financial services. While highlighting that the Reserve Bank of India had last year given only 12 licences to international banking community to operate in India, Mr Jones told Business line in an interview that this was “not enough” and “no where near enough” Protecting domestic banks“If they are doing this to protect the domestic banks and if the domestic banks are good enough, they have nothing to fear. In fact, they should really win — because they have been at it for a long time. If they are not good enough, then why the Indian population should be denied better banking. It’s a shame that this amazing entrepreneurial culture is not seeing benefits in liberalisation in financial services”, Mr Jones said. He, however, reiterated UK’s commitment in maintaining a close and mutually beneficial relationship with India. Currently, the annual value of the UK-India bilateral trade is pegged at $9 billion. Keep trade In balance“To keep the trade in balance, if we turn around to someone like Tatas and say we don’t mind if you come and buy Jaguar. We welcome, we love you, come and do it. Why can’t they turn around to RBS, Standard Chartered and say the same to us. That’s a bit of cloud on the horizon. Britain is a free trading nation. We do practice what we preach. We are not hypocritical about it. I would love to see India open up on financial services more than she does it today”, he said. On whether, he expects investments from India into the UK exceeding the investments from the latter country into India in the coming years on the back of “emblematic deals” such as Tata-Corus, Mr Jones said that he expects is investments to stay in balance. “British companies are going to invest heavily here because of the sheer volume of money that India will spend on infrastructure in the coming years”, he pointed out. On legal servicesHe also expressed hope that Indian legal services would be opened up to foreign lawyers. “When capital comes into a country, the people who invest need their own advisors. If India is really going to make a reality of investing in infrastructure, they have to open up to lawyers”, he said. To the domestic Indian lawyers, he said that they have nothing to fear. “The big project finance lawyers from London don’t want to open offices to do litigation and property, which is the market Indian lawyers are afraid about losing. They want to do serious huge project finance and corporate finance work”, Mr Jones, who has brought a large business delegation from the UK, said. More Stories on : Financial Services | Foreign Trade
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