Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday left for Davos in Switzerland to attend the World Economic Forum. "Showcasing India's resilient economy and India's attractiveness as a destination of doing business! PM Narendra Modi emplanes for Davos to participate in the World Economic Forum," Ministry of External Affairs Spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said in a tweet.
The prime minister was accompanied by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and Commerce and Industry Minister Suresh Prabhu, among others. The prime minister will also hold bilateral talks with the President of Swiss Confederation, Alain Berset, besides holding a series of meetings with business leaders and addressing the international business council.
The theme of the four-day event at Davos is "Creating a Shared Future in a Fractured World". Modi will be the first prime minister from India to participate in the forum meeting in two decades after the then Prime Minister H.D. Deve Gowda in 1997.
The main event in Davos will be the keynote speech of Modi at the plenary session on January 23. On Tuesday, Modi will also interact with 120 members of the International Business Council, which is a part of the WEF. He will also interact with CEOs of Indian companies separately.
PepsiCo Indra Nooyi, Microsoft's Satya Nadella, Ericsson CEO Borje Ekholm, Qualcomm's Paul Jacob, Thyssenkrupp's Heinrich Hiesinger, Hitachi's Hiroaki Nakanishi, Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem of DP World, IBM's boss and WEF cochair Ginni Rommety and Alibaba's Jack Ma will be the prominent business leaders in attendance.
The Indian business community is keenly following Modi's interactions in Davos. "It is possibly the only venue where all the world leaders, investors, entrepreneurs come together and discuss issues that companies and countries are facing. Lot of intellectual discussion take place at this platform and great outcomes are churned out of the same," said Mehul Patel, an Indian-origin businessman in Davos. Patel underlined India has a strong presence at the global economic summit this time.
"There is a lot of excitement that Indian PM is coming here. Spoke to a lot of people from US and Europe who are excited that India has a strong presence in Davos this time," he added.
Ahead of his visit, the prime minister said on Sunday that he looked forward to sharing his vision for India's engagement with the international community. "The existing and emerging challenges to the contemporary international system and global governance architecture deserve serious attention of leaders, governments, policy-makers, corporates and civil societies around the world," Modi said in a pre-departure statement here. "In recent years, India's engagement with the outside world has become truly and effectively multi-dimensional, covering political, economic, people-to-people, security and other spheres," he said.
Explaining the significance of Modi's visit during a media briefing here on Friday, Vijay Gokhale, Secretary (Economic Relations) in the Ministry of External Affairs, said that in 1997, the Indian economy was well below $1 trillion whereas it is now above $2 trillion.
