Friday, January 7 2005 16:44 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Mumbai: The Centre today (Jan 7, 2005) said it is adopting a strategy of investment-led growth and urged the non-resident Indians (NRIs) to invest in sectors like agriculture, services and industry.

"Government believes the NRIs are no more 'non-resident Indians' but they are 'non-resident investors' for India," Finance Minister P Chidambaram said in Mumbai today while addressing the delegates at the third Pravasi Bharatiya Divas 2005 celebrations.

Chidambaram invited NRIs investments in sectors like agriculture, irrigation, water shed programmes, rural health facilities, village school, mid-day meal schemes, computer education and textbooks in school, rural roads and electrification initiatives.

The Finance Minister, quoting a study conducted in 2001, said there are over 16.6 million NRIs and out of that 4.5 million reside in industrial countries and 12.1 million in developing countries.

"If we are ignoring rural India, then we are ignoring 65 per cent of the country. We should divide the benefits of globalisation to rural India also", Chidambaram said.

He said the benefits reaped from open market should carry forward to initiatives to abolish poverty and to provide a decent life standard to rural India.

"The task of transforming the savings to investment is big as there is huge risk involved. But the art of governance is all about converting savings into investment", Chidambaram added.