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Union Minister for Commerce and Industry, Piyush Goyal has emphasised India's strength in talent, innovation, and clean energy while addressing the US-India Strategic Partnership Forum, days after US President Donald Trump revised the H1B visa norms and raised the annual fee to USD 100,000.
Responding to the concerns around the steep hike in visa fees, Goyal said that India continues to provide solutions for corporations across the world, including in the United States, by leveraging its pool of skilled engineers and graduates. "We also provide a huge amount of talent and innovation, for which Indian engineers and graduates are famous. That also provides us an opportunity to provide solutions for corporations across the world including in the US to support their growth plans, to focus on new research and development and new ideas," the minister said. He further highlighted that India's startup ecosystem is "very vibrant," with several companies emerging with ideas that go beyond traditional resources. According to him, India is witnessing "convenient action," which Prime Minister Narendra Modi had envisioned as early as 2010 when he was Chief Minister of Gujarat. Highlighting the country's energy potential, Goyal noted that India is well placed to expand its clean energy capacity significantly over the next five years. "Collectively today, India is in a sweet spot to expand our clean energy over the next 5 years, we hope to grow from over 250 GW to 550 GW, and India has a very high element advantage which not many countries can offer. We have an integrated national grid of 500 GW, half of which is renewable and offers you much more resilience and stability," he said. He pointed out that this grid provides socialised demand management across the country and presents a unique advantage for global investors, especially for those looking to set up data centres in India. "That 500 GW will expand to at least a 1000 GW," he added. The minister also highlighted nuclear power as another area for India-US cooperation. He said that both nations are working to address outstanding issues and support private sector efforts in the nuclear energy space, including small modular nuclear reactors. "India continues to invest in nuclear power, we would probably double our nuclear power in the coming years through government intervention. But, we do take it on a much bigger scale, it has had challenges of price, cost of energy, which will need to be sorted out," he noted. (ANI)
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