India voices concern over Trump's remark on H1B visa

New Delhi, Mar 12: India today voiced concerns over talks of scrapping non-immigrant H1B visa for professionals by the Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, saying such a move would impact export-led growth.

"My concern is that Donald trump in last debate, said H1B, whatever it is, I use it but I don't like it. I want to scrap all H1B. That's very worrying for export-led growth going forward," Chief Economic Adviser Arvind Subramanian said at the Advancing Asia Conference co-hosted by India and IMF.

Republican party frontrunner Trump during presidential campaign said the H1B Visa programme that allows US employers to hire foreign workers in specialty occupations for a period of time, should be ended.

Subramanian said services-led export model can push India to achieve 8-10 per cent sustained growth but talk on H1B scrapping was worrying. "The concern we have is if we have more services export led growth rather than domestic led manufacturing, will the politics of that be very different from politics in Japan... If you have more services led growth the politics of that will be very different," he said.

Emphasising that rapid growth in export is very important ingredient for achieving 8-10 per cent growth rate in the medium term, he said, it can come with combination of manufacturing and services.

"I think India cannot deviate from the historical experience that in order to grow at 8-10 per cent you have to export rapidly. I think the notion that we can use our domestic market to grow at sustainable 8-10 per cent medium term history is against that model. Where I think India can be unique is instead of growth being led by low skill manufacturing. I think it is going to come about with a combination of manufacturing and services," he said.

Manufacturing alone is going to be little bit difficult because of what is happening in technology and so on, he said, adding, it has to be a unique model.

He further said the present government has got huge mandate so there is prospect for accelerated reforms.

"India is a large diverse democratic set up exploiting the dynamism of decentralisation, coupled with accelerated reforms from the Centre.we are such a large diverse country the diversification will come through competition between states," he added.

PTI