'Mumbai will emerge as global financial market'

Mumbai, Nov 29: As efforts are underway to turn Mumbai into a Regional Financial Centre (RFC), which will bring the metropolis in line with the already existing RFCs like Shanghai and Singapore, US Ambassador to India, David C Mulford today predicted that Mumbai will emerge over time as an important global financial market.

Addressing the inaugural session of the ongoing US-India Business Summit here, Mr Mulford said, ''Mumbai has been a central trading hub for centuries, and even tody is still a magnet for growing trade and commerce''.

He was all praise for the surging Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) whose benchmark index has risen from 4500 in early 2004 to a recent high of 13,700 points.

It may be noted that a proposal to make Mumbai an RFC, which will bring the city in line with the already existing RFCs like Shanghai and Singapore, was under active consideration with the Union Government and a high-level committee had also been formed in this connection.

Talking about the performance being shown by the India Inc in the recent past, he said that ''Instead of spending it's entrepreneurial energy exploiting or avoiding the licence raj stranglehold of yesteryear, India Inc is rechanneling it's innovative spirit into the development of sophisticated technologies, new products, new markets, and new partners- driving India's economic growth''.

Foreign investors increasingly play a role in this growth, but Indians still provide the majority of investment, demonstrating homegrown confidence in India Inc's trajectory, he added.

UNI