New Delhi: The recent slump in economic growth notwithstanding, India will be one of the world's top consumption centres and a manufacturing and services hub for the next several decades, billionaire Gautam Adani has said, stressing there is no better time to bet on India than now.
India's economic growth slipped to 4.2 per cent in 2019-20 fiscal (April 2019 to March 2020) -- its slowest pace in more than a decade. International rating agencies as well as the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) have forecast a contraction in GDP in the financial year that began in April 2020 on account of the coronavirus-induced slowdown.
"What we must realize is that there are no absolute right or wrong ideas. What is required during an unprecedented, hard to model, crisis like COVID-19, is a Government that is willing to make decisions based on best available information at a given point of time and constantly adapting as new information becomes available," Adani said in the latest annual report of Adani Gas Ltd.
Countries with greater resources have struggled while India has done well in containing the fallout of COVID-19, he said.
"While our battle with the virus is far from over, I have no hesitation in stating that had the decisions that got made been delayed we could have been facing an unmitigated disaster that would not just impact India but have global ramifications," he said.
Adani, who heads the country's biggest infrastructure conglomerate spanning ports to power, said "business has suffered immensely, lives and jobs have been lost, and the migrant worker crisis saddened the entire nation, but the consequences of the unknown alternates would be far grimmer."
"What the leaders of our nation, the doctors, the healthcare workers, the police, the army, the small street side vendors, and the citizens have done to support each other is truly what defines India and its resiliency," he said. "Sitting where we are today, I can say that history is in process of being scripted."
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Stating that the short or mid-term possible economic outcomes as a result of COVID-19 are hard to predict, Adani said there cannot be any denying the fact that India over the next several decades will be a market continuously on the up and one that simply cannot be ignored.