Need better investment climate in India: Finnish cos

Top industry leaders of Finland are eager to invest in India provided the investment climate is improved and single window delivery system is put in place.

Updated on: Sep 10, 2012, 23:17:34 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, Helsinki

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Top industry leaders of Finland are eager to invest in India provided the investment climate is improved and single window delivery system is put in place.

Speaking to a group of Indian journalists, industry honchos said India was a preferred place than China for investment because of the country’s large English speaking population and a democratic setup.

But, bureaucratic hurdles and unclear policy are the biggest reasons for Finnish companies not investing much with just 100 Finnish companies having presence in India. And, some of them see the incapability of the government to make things happen as fast as the industry wants in India a big area of concern.

“Different tax regimes, land use restrictions and ownership issues are sometimes frustrating for foreign investors,” said Andrew Benko, president of mining and construction division of Metso, which provides equipment to major Indian mining companies. “Indian bureaucracy to me is a chart of complexity.”

Matti Alahuhta, President of India’s second largest elevator and escalator company Kone, said India was a growing market and wanted the government to have a more transparent regulatory mechanism to attract more foreign direct investment.

“We should know what would be the policy for foreign investors in the next 10-15 years,” said he said, in an apparent reference to General Anti Avoidance Rules (Gaar) that provides for imposing tax retrospectively.

Some other corporate officials also referred to unending un-certainity over country’s economic policy.

“There is uncertainty over policies in India, China and United. I know the date by when this will get over in China and US. I have no such date for India,” Benko said.

President of a Finnish power company having planned major investments in India was of the view that India needs to have clarity in policies related to future technologies. “It (India) should not find itself sleeping in this fast changing world,” he observed.

Many companies such as Chempolis, Kemira, Quebec have planned investment in India for providing clean technologies and are looking for tie-ups with Indian companies. “We have technologies that can help India in solving many of its problems,” said Kari Komulaimen, Director International Network at Tekes, Finnish funding agency for technology and innovation.

Fincode, a Finnish government body, is already negotiating with several Indian companies for setting up joint ventures.

A visit to Helsinki was sponsored by Finnish government.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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