With a presence in 152 countries across the globe,, EY’s global chairman, has a better feel of the pulse of the global economy than most CEOs. So when the 54-yearold Weinberger says that global CEOs are looking at India along with US as the world’s top investment destinations, his voice carries heft. During his annual visit to the country, Weinberger spoke in an interview toabout India’s tax reforms, the budget and audit rotation. Edited excerpts:I think relative to the rest of the world, India is a bright spot from the point of investment and growth. Now I see that from many vantage points. We did a survey around the world and India was number one for attractiveness for investments for the next three years. So that is a general assessment.We are in 152 countries and we have got 2,000 clients who talk to our people. They are thinking about where they want to invest and India and the US occupy the top two spots. Why is India the place where people would look at? First of all, the political security India offers relative to other emerging markets, then there is non-reliance on commodities, the fiscal discipline which was shown in this budget… Maybe we will see an interest rate reduction here in India which would be a growth opportunity.The fiscal discipline coupled with some good policies, like Make in India, help attract investments. And Prime Minister Modi’s trips around the world have brought a lot of commitments back to India for direct investment. Foreign direct investment ( FDI ) has gone up when it is going down in rest of the world.The budget which until now was just looking at urban and getting the demand up has now been focusing on rural. This could really help create jobs and it can really help provide consumers. Some of the things that they did in the budget for FDI like having automatic approvals for agriculture marketing companies will be positive for the investment.The commitment to infrastructure, we are really waiting for it to kick in, but there has been a significant uptake. On the tax side, they did not lay out a specific goal or timeline for reducing the rate for corporate tax to 25%, which would put it best amongst the world. Getting some of the deductions could take away some of the uncertainties in the taxation.India is thinking long term. You are looking at transformational and fundamental changes to really bring up the country… When I look at what India is trying to do, there is a real opportunity for achieving some real big wins. If something like GST (goods and services tax ) is introduced, then these wins could be huge.If they ( Indian government ) stay with their commitment on corporate tax or GST it would be a great positive. The other things in the budget, like clarifications on something like withholding tax and other changes are also positives and it takes away certain uncertainties.The issues around the administration of the tax system where retrospective taxes, as you are well aware, are addressed in the budget but I don’t think it’s completely clarified… The issue would continue to be there but the good news is now you have some new processes to limit future retroactive tax proposals. There is more security now that the government is not interested in trying to do a retrospective tax increase which is a positive thing.India for the last two years has been the growth leader for our 29 regions around the world. So last year we grew about 20% and this year too we grew around same level. We have 27,000 people in India now. This is second highest number of people after the US. Of that, about 12,000 are serving India specifically and about 15,000 in the innovation centre and talent hub we have here which serves the region and the world. As recently as 2012, we only had 12,000 people here. So we have a huge growth rate and we are probably going to hire another 20% people this year.The business is going extremely well. It is growing in all sectors. For us, the upcoming audit rotation is going to bring new opportunities. And you have something called Indian advisory standards, so that’s going to be a new responsibility.We are growing across the board--digital, cyber, advisory, risk, forensic, tax, all. Just the fact that Rajiv Memani (chairman, India region) sits on our global board should tell you a lot about India’s importance in EY’s scheme of things.I don’t think audit rotation is going to positively affect audit quality. Remember that we already have partner rotation and every country in Europe has its own rotation rules. Every country has subsidiaries in these countries and then you rotate auditors in different times, in addition to partner rotation.There are two reasons for it. I don’t think anything has been proven that the amount of time you are serving a client affects the findings of the audit. Second argument for audit rotation is concentration. Companies can choose whoever they want to but they can only choose only qualified auditors who can serve their companies in the 100 countries they operate in. There is a fallacy in audit rotation. They view the big four as the same. So in audit rotation you have four firms (to choose from). You can’t choose your current auditor, so three are left. If you are doing advisory work with one of the remaining three, you can’t do audit. Now you are down to two firms. You only have a choice of those firms that have the capability to serve you in 100 countries.So rotation, to me, is not the right approach but the bottom line is that we have to make it work. We will figure it out, the industry will make it work.