India-US CEO Forum to begin on Thursday

Washington: Led by Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia and US Deputy National Security Adviser Michael Froman, the India-US CEO Forum will meet here on Thursday.

The Indian CEOs will be represented by Ratan Tata and those from the US will be represented by David Cote at the meeting to be held at the Foggy Bottom headquarters of the State Department, an official announcement said.

Union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, who will be in Washington this week to attend the annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank will be also addressing the meeting along with Commerce and Industry

Minister Anand Sharma.

The US Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, the US Trade Representative, Ron Kirk, and the Under Secretary for Economics, Energy, and Agricultural Affairs Robert D Hormats will also participate in the meeting.

Deputy Secretary of State William Burns will welcome the group and in his address is expected to highlight the important role the private sector plays in the US-India partnership.

"The Forum is a true public private endeavor to enhance bilateral trade and investment. The Forum gives US and Indian CEOs the opportunity to discuss issues of mutual interest and submit discrete, action-oriented recommendations to both governments for consideration," the State Department said.

Besides Cote of Honeywell; other American CEO in this forum are Louis R Chenevert of United Technologies Corp, Richard T Clark of Merck, Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan; Paul Hanrahan of AES Corporation; Paul E Jacobs of Qualcomm; Ellen

Kullman of DuPont; Andrew N Liveris of Dow; Terry McGraw of The McGraw-Hill Companies; Indra Nooyi of Pepsico; Vikram Pandit of Citigroup and Michael Splinter of Applied Materials.

Besides Tata, the Indian side is represented by Mukesh Ambani of Reliance Industries; Hari Bhartia of Jubilant Lifesciences, Pratip Chaudhuri of State Bank of India, Ashok Sekhar Ganguly of ABP Pvt Ltd, S Gopalakrishnan of Infosys Ltd, Chanda Kochhar of ICICI Bank, Sunil Bharti Mittal of Bharti Enterprises, Deepak Parekh of HDFC Ltd, Preetha Reddy of Apollo Hospital Group; Kiran Mazumdar Shaw of Biocon Ltd and Analjit Singh of Max India Ltd.

The forum aims to create an "enabling environment" by bringing business leaders together to build the bridges of the 21st century.