Obama points at India’s lax intellectual-property regime and uncertain tax policies as Modi woos US investors at meeting with CEOs

Visiting US president Barack Obama and American business leaders on Monday raised concern over a lax intellectual property rights (IPR) regime and unpredictable tax system in India, prompting Prime Minister Narendra Modi to offer an open business climate and stable tax polices.

Obama also announced $4 billion worth of investment in India, including $1 billion for financing exports of made-in-US products. Both Obama and Modi pitched for the ‘make-in’ programmes of their respective countries.

At the India-US CEO Forum, the US president said exporters of his country were “very concerned” about issues like IPR as the US was increasingly becoming a knowledge-based economy.

He said the “absence of effective IP protection” in India was affecting business.

“We tend to operate at the higher ends of the global value chain,” he said at the meeting, which included Honeywell CEO Dave Cote, Indira Nooyi of Pepsico, Harold McGraw, chairman of McGraw Hill Financial, Ajay Banga, CEO of Mastercard, and Bob Iger, CEO of Walt Disney Company.

The Indian side included Tata Sons chairman Cyrus Mistry, who along with Cote was co-chair of the CEOs’ forum. Others who attended included HDFC chairman Deepak Parekh, RIL chairman Mukesh Ambani, ADA group chairman Anil Ambani, Adani group chairman Gautam Adani, ONGC CMD Dinesh K Saraf, SBI chairman Arundhati Bhattacharya, Jubilant group head Hari S Bhartia, BHEL head B Prasada Rao, Biocon CMD Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw and Sunil Mittal of Bharti Enterprises.

For more visit: Business Standard

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