Welcoming government’s steps to promote FDI in the country, industry body CII today said investments should happen now on the ground and ease current account deficit.

“Steps taken by the government are very much needed to increase investor confidence and attract FDI into the country; this will address the issue of current account deficit, and I believe it is an ongoing process and expect more easing up in the future,” Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) President S Gopalakrishnan told reporters here.

“What we now need is results in the form of investments into the country, based on the new norms,” he added.

When asked whether industry looks at these steps as panic reactions ahead of Lok Sabha elections, he said, “We are in a period that is highly political due to elections;.....I don’t want to attribute any reasons; I only hope that we will see some movement during this Parliament session, as well as implementation on the ground.”

“Lot of announcements have been made based on that we need to see investments happening and easing up of our current account deficit,” he added.

Stating that there is larger political consensus towards economic growth, he said, “If we look at the last twenty years, we have seen average growth rate of 8-8.5 per cent across NDA, UPA and third front regime;.....all political parties support economic growth and job creation in the medium to long term, in the short term there might be political compulsions due to elections and things like that.”

He added: “Top ten states that have economic growth of 8 per cent plus are being ruled by six different political parties.”

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