What They Said

"I am happy that a new law is coming. However, I will not be happy till we are able to return the money to investors… Panic should not be created. I have always been with the common people and will always remain with them… The Securities and Exchange Board of India and Reserve Bank of India also did not do their duties. They are talking big."

– West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Saradha chit fund scam (PTI)

“It is a win—win deal, good for the flyers. It provides more competition and more connectivity and better efficiency… Competition is always good for any industry.”

- Civil Aviation Minister Ajit Singh on Jet Airways-Etihad deal

“We have not suspended the licence, we have cancelled it. The company cannot manufacture the Johnson baby powder at this stage… The company has been using ethylene oxide in its skin powder for infants. The sterilisation process using the chemical is completely wrong, for it remains as a residue. With usage, the talcum powder could turn carcinogenic and cause irreparable damage.”

- Maharashtra FDA Joint Commissioner (Drug) K.B. Shende on cancellation of Johnson & Johnson’s cosmetics manufacturing licence

"Where supply factors (infrastructure or labor market bottlenecks) and domestic policy factors (policy uncertainty and regulatory obstacles) have contributed to the recent stalling of investment (Brazil, India, and Russia) there are down side risks to growth potential.”

– G-20 surveillance note

“We are a motorcycle specialist, the world's most profitable, and it’s third largest. Being a motorcycle specialist we're indifferent to moped and scooter sales. Just, as a cardiac surgeon is indifferent to the market for brain and knee surgery. So only motorcycle stats matter to us, two-wheeler stats are irrelevant.”

- Bajaj Auto MD Rajiv Bajaj

“SEBI, which has a regulatory role in the matter, has not come across any instances of anonymous investments entered into the stock market through participatory note (PN) route… PN can be issued only to those entities which are regulated by the relevant regulatory authority in the country of their incorporations and subject to compliance of with ‘Know Your Client’ norms.”

- Minister of State for Finance Namo Narain Meena in reply to Lok Sabha question

“After the Abbott deal, we decided to retain the OTC business as we believe this is a great business opportunity leveraging the growing Indian consumer market. The Indian consumer space is evolving rapidly. With rising incomes and increased access to information, the consumer is realising the importance of being proactive about their self care needs.”

- Piramal Enterprises Executive Director Nandini Piramal

“The Rabi crop is likely to be good one. That will help bring inflation down. So as inflation comes down, there is case for RBI to cut interest rate. I think, we have a case for stronger growth.” 

- Chief Economic Advisor Raghuram Rajan

 “We are determined to go back to the path of fiscal consolidation. We have laid out a new path and I have said these are red lines. These will never, never be breached. Going forward, in 2013-14, the fiscal deficit will be contained below 4.8 per cent of the GDP.”

– Finance Minister P. Chidambaram

“We have moved far away from the command and control economy of the earlier times. Ensuring good governance and managing the economy today are complex tasks. How to ensure that our civil services have the required sets of skills to manage this complexity is a major challenge before us.”

– Prime Minister Manmohan Singh

“Yes, there have been expressions of interest very clearly which have been received. But the first step has been taken by Tesco, by Sainsbury’s. There has also been an expression of interest, but not a formal proposal, and that’s from Carrefour, H&M (Hannes & Mauritz). So, they all are coming.”

– Commerce Minister Anand Sharma

“Today we have enrolled 380 million of the 1.2 billion people. Our daily processing is about a million people a day. Our goal is to reach 400 million this year and 600 million by 2014… People see this as a gateway to many services.”

- Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) Chairman Nandan Nilekani

“We have one demographic dividend (which is) our young population. They need to be skilful and trained with global expertise….and this (education loan) is a good way to ensure social sustainability. Private and foreign banks must say yes to education loans.” 

- Reserve Bank of India Deputy Governor K.C. Chakrabarty

“Clearly, all this (internal investigation) has shown no instances of money-laundering transactions as charged by Cobrapost… The investigation is being undertaken in about 25 branches and transactions in the past 12 months are being reviewed… Hopefully, the investigation will be over in a few weeks. Till the findings are out, the employees will remain suspended.”

- HDFC Bank Executive Director Paresh Sukthankar

“The industry is in a bad financial condition. Many operators are reducing activity or have stopped working. Most have huge debts. So to repair the industry we need tariff hardening. Surely not tariff drops. For me, it’s not about hiking tariffs, but making sure that the industry comes to a sustainable level.”

- Vodafone India Managing Director and CEO Marten Pieters

 “My expectation is that within two weeks we will essentially have a situation where we would be able to say that all power projects which are going to be completed by March 2015, will have fuel supply agreements.”

- Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia 

“Today, we are not sure whether its actually going to benefit the country or not. The whole subject should be relooked… At the end of the day, if you are not going to have industry, then there will be no jobs and that won’t be right. Our worry is that the balance is now tilted away from industry rather than it being in favour of it.”

– FICCI President Naina Lal Kidwai on Land Acquisition Bill

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