Highlights of Prime Minister Modi's Opening Speech of BRICS Business Forum 2022

Prime Minister Narendra Modi delivered his inaugural speech at BRICS Business Forum on Tuesday 22nd June 2022. Here are the edited translated excerpts of PM Modi's speech:

Namaskar!

BRICS was established with the belief that this group of emerging economies can evolve as an engine of global growth.

Today when the whole world is focusing on post-COVID recovery, then the role of BRICS countries will continue to remain very important again.

Friends,

In order to deal with the economic problems arising out of the pandemic, in India we have adopted the mantra of "reform, perform and transform".

And the results of this approach are evident from the performance of the Indian economy.

This year, we are expecting 7.5 percent growth, which makes us the fastest growing major economy.

Transformative changes are taking place in every sector in the emerging 'New India'.

Today I want to draw your attention on four main aspects.

First, a key pillar of India's current economic recovery is technology-led growth.

We are supporting innovation in every sector.

We have made innovation-friendly policies in many areas like space, blue economy, green hydrogen, clean energy, drones, geo-spatial data, etc.

Today, India has one of the best eco-systems in the world for innovation, which is reflected in the growing number of Indian start-ups.

There are more than 100 unicorns in over 70,000 start-ups in India, and their number continues to grow.

Second, even during the pandemic, India continued to make many efforts to improve the ease of doing business.

Thousands of rules have been changed to reduce the compliance burden on the business.

The work is going on at a massive scale to bring in more transparency and consistency in Government policies and procedures.

Third, Infrastructure in India is also being improved on a large scale, and its expansion is also taking place.

For the same, India has prepared a National Master Plan.

There are investment opportunities of $1.5 trillion under our National Infrastructure Pipeline.

And fourth, the kind of digital transformation is being taking place in India today, it has never been seen in the world stage.

The value of Indian digital economy will reach 1 trillion dollars by 2025.

The growth of the digital sector also encouraged the participation of women in the workforce.

There are approximately 36 % women out of 4.4 million professionals working in our IT sector.

The maximum benefit from Technology-based financial inclusion has also been gone to the women in our rural areas.

BRICS Women Business Alliance can undertake study in this transformative change in India.

Similarly, we can have a useful dialogue on innovation-led economic recovery.

I suggest that the BRICS Business Forum may develop a platform for regular exchanges between our startups.

I am sure that today's discussion of BRICS Business Forum will be very beneficial.

I wish you all the best.

Thank you.