Deloitte upbeat on India

Nobody can say with precision, but I really believe that India is going to come out of this pandemic growing at the fastest rate; definitely the fastest large economy. I think the recovery is going to be very strong. The fundamentals (of Indian economy) are there and I'm very bullish as is Deloitte on India -Punit Renjen, CEO, Deloitte

Washington: India will come out of the Covid-19 crisis that has impacted the entire world with flying colours, Deloitte CEO Punit Renjen has said, asserting that the 21st century is India's century. Renjen said the Indian government has performed well in addressing the challenges posed by the Covid-19 pandemic. "This is India's century and I'm convinced about it," the 60-year-old prominent Indian American business leader told PTI in an interview. "I am certainly a little biased given my (Indian) heritage but I'm actually convinced that this is India's century because of just the raw talent that exists in India, the number of people that comprise India, the democratic tradition that has been around for 75 years," he said.

Observing that the pandemic impacted everyone, Renjen said the pandemic impacted India very hard, given the lockdown that the government had to put in place, given the size of the population and what the virus potentially could do to India. The Rohtak-born Indian American CEO, who has been heading Deloitte since 2015, described as "remarkable" a recent report from the International Monetary Fund which projected 12.5 per cent growth rate for the country. "Nobody can say with precision, but I really believe that India is going to come out of this pandemic growing at the fastest rate; definitely the fastest large economy," he said. "I think the recovery is going to be very strong. The fundamentals (of Indian economy) are there and I'm very bullish as is Deloitte on India," said Renjen, also a member of the Deloitte Global Board of Directors.

This was a very unpredictable virus. India is a country of 1.3 billion people and there are communities in India like Dharavi in Mumbai that are highly congested areas, which are really prime areas for the virus to spread, he said. "Given all of those conditions, I believe that the Indian economy, the Indian people have weathered this as well as they possibly could," he said, adding that, however, there have been difficult times but that is not just unique to India. "It has been very difficult here in the United States. It's been difficult in Western countries. I'm confident and optimistic there with the vaccines in place, some of the learnings that we've had in the last year that we can actually see a light at the end of the tunnel," Renjen said.