Thursday, May 26 2005 11:36 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Geneva: Buoyed by the passing of Patents Ordinance by Parliament, Chief Executive Officers of Swiss Industry and heads of Global industry consortium saw India as a country with tremendous potential and favoured further investment.

This was conveyed to President A P J Abdul Kalam last night (May 25, 2005) upon his arrival in Geneva on a four-day State visit.

During the interaction with top 25 Chief Executives of the industry, Kalam presented his 'Vision 2020' to them saying India and Switzerland had a common interests and favoured convergence of minds to benefit the business communities of the two countries.

Representative of Novartis Pharmaceutical Company congratulated the Indian Government for passing the Patents legislation but said, "A little more needed to be done."

He was referring about the missing of the mention of "effective data dealing" of pervious researches.

However, he was conveyed that India had so many laws to protect the Intellectual Property Rights.

The representative of Oracle Software Company also favoured more participation of his company in India but sought further improvement in the infrastructure in the country. The software company has its offices in Hyderabad and Bangalore.

The President also had to face a query from the representatives of small companies who asked him as to why the textile industry was missing from his Vision 2020.

Kalam promptly replied that the textile industry was well within his ambit of infrastructure development, one of the five sectors named by him in his vision document.

While giving a presentation on his Vision 2020 document, the President named Agriculture and Food Processing, Education, Information and Communication Technology, Infrastructure and Self Reliance as the five sectors where India needed to look up as the priority areas.

"The success of the Vision 2020 will be true once the 260 million population in India, who are living below the poverty line, is lifted," the President said.

After the hour-long briefing, the Captains of Indian Industry asked the President as to what they could do to sell India as a brand name.

"Brand comes from competition which is based on cost, quality and availability of manpower. We can compete on costs in Pharma sector, Information Technology sector," the President replied promptly.

He said that on the other hand, Switzerland had small entrepreneurs in these sectors and India had the research and manpower. "There should be a convergence of minds and both can work together," Kalam said.