WEF Davos summit starts on Jan 20; Jaitley, Goyal to attend

Davos, Jan 19: The World Economic Forum's five-day annual jamboree of the global elite will begin on Jan 20, Tuesday, with presence of over 2,500 political and business leaders, including union ministers Arun Jaitley and Piyush Goyal as well as more than 100 industry leaders from India.

Other prominent Indian names would include Chief Economic Adviser Arvind Subramanian, as also Chief Ministers of Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh -- Devendra Fadnavis and Chandrababu Naidu, respectively.

The five-day Annual Meeting of WEF will also be attended by 40 heads of states or governments, including German Chancellor Angel Merkel, France's President Francois Hollande, China's Prime Minister Li Keqiang, Pakistan Prime Minister Muhammad Nawaz Sharif and Swiss President Simonetta Sommaruga.

Meeting against the backdrop of the world economy facing multiple challenges, the 45th WEF Annual Meeting would discuss 'The New Global Context' as this year's theme, while issues like terrorism are likely to hog the limelight in the wake of recent terror attacks including in France.

The WEF said that the meet is being held at a time when the risk of international conflict poses the "biggest threat" to global stability while likelihood of terrorist attacks has intensified the most since the last year.

Geneva-based WEF, a not-for-profit foundation that describes itself as promoting public-private cooperation, has been holding this high-profile annual summit in this small town on slopes of Alps mountain range since 1971.

The summit, to be kicked off with a welcome address by WEF Founder and Executive Chairman Klaus Schwab tomorrow evening, would continue till January 24 with more than 280 sessions spread across diverse topics including crisis and co-operation, growth and stability, innovation and industry, society and security.

Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, South African President Jacob Zuma, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, Tunisian President Beji Caid Essebsi and US Secretary of State John Kerry, would be also present.

Among Indian business leaders, those expected at the annual meeting of the rich and powerful from across the world include Tata group chief Cyrus Mistry, RIL's Mukesh Ambani, ICICI Bank's Chanda Kochhar, Jet Airways' Naresh Goyal, TCS' N Chandrasekaran and SBI's Arundhati Bhattacharya.

Besides, Bharat Forge's Baba Kalyani, Essar Group's Shashi and Ravi Ruia, and Infosys' Vishal Sikka, as also eminent names like Azim Premji, Sunil Mittal, Uday Kotak, Rahul Bajaj, Adi Godrej, Naveen Jindal and Sajjan Jindal will be present.

Among global leaders, Alibaba chief Jack Ma, Microsoft's Satya Nadella¸ Yahoo's Marissa Mayer and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg would also be present, along with IMF Chief Christine Lagarde as also heads of organisations like WTO, ILO, OECD as also central bank chiefs of Brazil, Canada, England, France, Italy, Japan, Mexico and Switzerland, among others.

PTI