New Delhi: President A P J Abdul Kalam today (Nov 14, 2004) said competitiveness was the single factor that would decide India's transformation to a developed nation.

"Business symbolises competitiveness, competitiveness leads to economic growth. Competitiveness will be the single factor which will decide India transforming into a developed nation," he said at the inauguration of annual India International Trade Fair in New Delhi.

Kalam said technology powers the competitiveness which leads to creation of brand institution.

"If we choose an integrated technology-driven path then India will be in a position to become a developed nation by 2020. If we use right technologies we can bring in the right non-linear elements in all our sectors," he said.

The President said, "We should have synchronised and integrated growth in all sectors of the economy which is vital for making the impact of growth reach every section of the society."

"Indian industry should learn to think big with the whole world as our market by developing a strong and interactive technology, market and value adding competitive linkage," he said.

"Indian industry should aim to become multinationals. Our youth love challenging jobs. We have to create challenging opportunities for them. We can win if we think we can win and act tenaciously with our clear goals in India to excel in a competitive new world and create India Brand," he said.

Kalam said India has 700 million people living in 6,00,000 villages and rural sector is a big market.

"We need enterprises to service this need and generate large scale employment," he said and laid down areas like bio-fuel, rural electrification and electricity generation using municipal waste that industry could invest in.

The President said India has embarked on a second Green Revolution which would enable increase in productivity and diversification of agriculture sector.

"From now on to 2020 India will gradually increase the production to around 400 million tonnes from 200 million tonnes at present. The increase in production will have to be done under the reduced availability of land from 170 million hectares to 100 million hectares with reduced availability," Kalam said pointing to the challenge agriculture sector faces.

He said the challenge can be met through information access to all stakeholders and not with central controls or restriction of movement of agro products.

Kalam said challenge before scientists and technologists would be in areas of development if seeds that would ensure good yield even under constraints of water and land with ecologically balanced farming.

"Domain of farming would enlarge from grain production to food processing and marketing. I visualise trade fair showcasing the state of the art food processing industries for enabling the farmers and village enterprises to learn and produce products which are competitive in both national and international markets," he said.

On the other theme of the Trade Fair-- Information and Communication Technology (ICT), the President said ICT is a potent tool in various sector of activities in public domain and agriculture is no exception.

Kalam said Indian IT industry should aim at a higher growth rate to reach a target of 150 billion dollars business by 2010.

He said this kind of growth of IT industry can come through innovation in application areas such as information security, e-governance, embedded real time software, hardware and software integration, chip design, wireless, infotainment and tele-education.

The President said this year's Trade Fair themes-Agriculture and Information Technology--are the key drivers of India's socio-economic development.

Kalam also greeted partner country for the fair China and focus country Brazil.