NEW YORK: The US Asia Business Forum, a Los Angeles, California based trade organization hosted its inaugural US Delegation to India in New Delhi on Oct 29. The delegation consisted of investors from areas of Entertainment, IT, Banking & Financial Services, Healthcare, Real Estate and Construction.

Some of the delegates included Ramesh Kapur - Chair of the DNC, Nirmal Sinha – PBD 2007 Awardee and more than 30 other entrepreneurs from US and Canada. Significantly, agreements worth more than US$ 2 billion were signed between various companies from India and the US during the delegation’s visit. Chief Guest on the occasion, Priya Ranjan Das Munshi, Minister for Information and Broadcasting hoped the USABF would play the role of a catalyst and will act as a bridge to harmonize the activities of FICCI, CII & ASSOCHAM.

The list of other VVIP’s who addressed the gathering were Chief Minister of Delhi Sheila Dixit, and Minister of Urban Development, Ajay Maken; Rambabu Sharma, President of the Delhi Pradesh Congress Party, John Fennerty, Deputy Economic Counsellor, Embassy of the US just to name a few. Kishore (Kevin) Kaul and Gurbax Bhasin, Executive Directors, USABF, in their inaugural welcome addresses in the presence of more than 200 well known personalities from both countries said that attempts such as these will strengthen trade relations between the two countries.

Das Munshi expressed confidence that by the end of the 11th five year plan, India would be at par with the best nations in the world and said that its relations with USA would go beyond expectations. He said India’s progress by the end of this period would not remain confined to only basic engineering, IT and other service industries alone, but will also see an agricultural boom which will transform the face of the country.

Talking about films he said that his Ministry had set up five committees to recommend expansion and growth of the film industry and production of quality films. He said a special training was being given on screen writing through a Mumbai based institute run by popular filmmaker Subhash Ghai in collaboration with Maharashtra Government. He admitted (in reply to a question from the audience) that there was some deficiency in this field. John Fennerty, Deputy Economic Counselor, Embassy of The USA, said that the relations between the USA & India (which were on the fast track), would reach "a new historic level" in the coming years.

He expressed his confidence that India, China & USA would become the biggest economic powers in the next 10 years. Krishna Shah a Film Producer from Los Angeles saw a big connection between Hollywood & Bollywood and said that the two (which were constantly in touch with each other) had a great future with their counterparts in France and England having failed to make any big impact. Urban Minister, Ajay Maken, disclosed that his Ministry had asked all the states to modify or do away with the rent control and urban ceiling acts making investment in real estate safe and secure for the investors.

Maken also made a fervent appeal to NRIs and Persons of Indian Origin to avail themselves of 100% FDI permitted in real estate and construction sectors. He said while tax incentives were proposed to be given in economic zones in India, particularly to POI’s and NRI’s, taxes were already the lowest in India compared to other countries in the world. Giving an instance he said while the tax, GDP ratio was 22% in China, it was only 8.8% in India.

Maken said that strong judiciary, alert media and active democracy along with rule of law well protected the interests of the investors. He said the protection now available to the tenants would be withdrawn under the New Master Plan which is coming up in Delhi by the end of this month.

He said that at the moment 300 million persons lived in the urban areas in India but their number would swell to 1.4 billion by 2050. Subhash Goyal, President of USABF – India Chapter regretted that even when India had made a lot of progress in different fields, its 300 million people still lived below the poverty line and there was wide spread unemployment in the country, particularly among the youth. He said the action plan suggested by him in his book entitled "Poverty Eradication and Economic Development through Tourism" could create 100 million jobs in the next 20 years. JC Sharma, a former Diplomat, traced the entire gamut of Indo-US Relations since the country achieved Independence and said never was there the time as now for "close, friendly and constructive ties" between the two countries.

He said the complimentary nature of interests between the two countries should not remain limited to information technology but be replicated in bio-technology, health care and other spheres of economic activity. Ramesh V Kapur, a prominent member of the delegation, explained how he and his group had lobbied with the US senators and US Congressmen for bringing the recent US-India civil nuclear deal to its logical conclusion. On the occasion, the USABF announced its 2nd annual trade delegation to India from the US starting on Jan 10, 2008, to be held in New Delhi.