New Delhi, March 3:

India’s finance minister told US business leaders today ‘we want your money’ as he urged them to invest in a fast-growing economy that is gearing up for further reforms.

“This is a very different India from what we were 20 years ago. In the next 20 years, we will be all the more different. All these are opportunities that beckon investment,” India’s finance minister P Chidambaram said. India, Asia’s third-largest economy, was on a sustainable eight per cent annual growth track, Chidambaram told US business leaders accompanying US president George W Bush on a three-day long visit to India that began Wednesday.

He renewed the government’s commitment to economic reforms and said he was ‘confident’ he could win passage of measures to raise foreign investment caps in key sectors such as insurance, according to the Press Trust of India.

Higher growth meant eight million jobs in a year, 1,000 km of roads, 10,000 megawatts (MW) of power, 50 million telephone connections and the capacity to make “young children become globally competitive,” Chidambaram said.

“Let me tell you, we want your money. Those who have money have the technology also. I want your technology also. I want your good management policies, good governance norms.” The minister was speaking at a conference on Indo-US Economic Cooperation, organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), India’s leading business lobby, and the United States India Business Council.

Chidambaram’s appeal came after he announced a populist budget earlier in the week targeting the nation’s poverty-stricken masses at the same time as pledging strong growth and ‘unrelenting’ fiscal vigilance.