Indian economy poised to take off, says Goyal

"RCEP was effectively becoming a free trade agreement between China and India. I don't think India is ready to engage unless we see open government, better transparency, regulatory practices being followed, and greater market access for Indian goods and services on a reciprocal basis," Goyal said.

Davos: Asserting that the Indian economy is well-poised to take off, Union minister Piyush Goyal on Thursday said there is a lot of enthusiasm for making investments in the country.

Speaking at a session at the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual summit here, the Commerce and Industry Minister also said the government will hold discussions with Britain and the European Union on free trade agreements.

Britain is set to leave the European Union by the end of January.

"Things have once again started showing an uptrend, the economy is well poised to take off from here," Goyal said.

Piyush Goyal speaking at a session at the World Economic Forum annual summit in Davos, on Thursday.

According to him, the enthusiasm to make investments in India is infectious.

At least four or five companies have said that more than 50 per cent of their total workforce would operate out of India in the coming years. Some of them are big names, he noted.

On RCEP, Goyal said it was an "unbalanced trade agreement, which was really not fulfilling the guiding principles on which RCEP started about eight years ago, therefore India chose not to participate in it".

Out of the RCEP countries India already has bilateral trade agreements with ASEAN 10 with Japan and Korea, we are close to concluding negotiations with Australia which we have restarted now and in the next 6 to 8 months we are can close a bilateral trade partnership with Australia, he said.

"RCEP was effectively becoming a free trade agreement between China and India. I don't think India is ready to engage unless we see open government, better transparency, regulatory practices being followed, and a greater market access for Indian goods and services on a reciprocal basis," he said.

Air India has been in the red for long and the government is now in the process of finalising the contours for its disinvestment.

Responding to a query about proposed disinvestment of Air India, BPCL and other companies, Goyal said in the first term, the government had inherited an economy which was in pretty terrible shape.

Steps were taken to put the economy back in shape and if the government had looked at divesting these jewels, it would not have got a great value.