January 2015 \ India Empire Events \ Interview—FICCI
"It is the right time for diaspora to connect economically with India"

Interview with Dr A. Didar Singh, Secretary General, Federation of Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry

Please give us an overview of FICCI’s activities in the past one year, and what have been the key focus areas…

FICCI does a very large number of activities. Something like around 300 activities around the year, around the whole country, its international activities, sometimes two or three in a single day depending on foreign visitors and activities that keep happening. So this is part of our regular connect because FICCI works in some 74 sectors and we have partnerships internationally with 250 business organizations in 140 countries. It is a lot of connect we have internationally, as well as domestically as I mentioned in 74 sectors in the country. So lot of activity keeps happening in each of the sectors separately. Key focus areas have been basically the major business areas for FICCI. Taxation has always been a major area. We have always made a lot of reports on the whole matter of taxation, on promoting GST, on coming to a consensus to improve a single market in the country. We worked a lot on ease of doing business with state Governments, we work with the Central Government, we work with PMG --- project management group a lot to ensure that those stuck projects, there is a way of getting out, creating an online system to apply, and get inter-ministerial coordination and approvals that may be required. We have worked across the board, whether it was environment, whether it was consumer affairs, whether it was textiles, whether it was international events, commerce. FICCI is one of the few organizations in India which has actually been working on sports for over 10 years. We do a major event called TURF, we do large number of sports activities, and we are expanding in that area. Like the business of soccer, the business of other sports. We have been saying for some time now that we take out a report every year on legalizing betting, because we believe that betting leads to criminal activity which is not good for the country. And it leads to tremendous loss of revenue for the country when you do illegal betting. It is better to make it legal like in many parts of the world. So we are pushing for that.




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