Advani meets top industrialists to discuss state of the economy

New Delhi, Nov 20 (IANS) Top industrialists and representatives of apex chambers Thursday met with Leader of the Opposition L.K. Advani to discuss the state of the Indian economy in the wake of current global slowdown, in what has raised eyebrows in both the political and industrial establishment.

This was the first such meeting sought by Advani, the prime ministerial candidate for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and was attended by his party colleagues Jaswant Singh and Yashwant Sinha, both of whom handled the finance portfolios for the previous National Democratic Alliance (NDA) regime.

Some 15 industrialists, including Anil and Mukesh Ambani of the two Reliance groups, Sunil Mittal of Bharti group, Rahul Bajaj of Bajaj Auto, Subhash Chandra of Zee group and Sashi Ruia of the Essar group attended the meeting.

Also present were the presidents of the three apex chambers - K.V. Kamath of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), Sajjan Jindal of the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry (Assocham) and Rajeev Chandrasekhar of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (Ficci).

In a brief note for the meeting, Chandrasekhar sought to tell Advani that recent data on macroeconomic situation confirmed a slowing down of the Indian economy.

'While on the one hand industrial growth slumped to a measly 4.8 percent in September (against 7 percent in September 2007), on the other hand exports shrunk by 15 percent in October,' the Ficci president's note said.