Our automobile sector is not showing the growth rate it used to. I don't think automobile sector is the decisive indicator of economic performance.

PUNE: Hardeep Singh Puri , Minister of State for Commerce and Industry refused to accept that there is any economic slowdown in the country. He gave examples of growth in ridership of metro, ride sharing services, the growth of the civil aviation sector and creation of urban spaces through various schemes to substantiate his claim, while speaking at the first Asia Economic Dialogue organised by the Ministry of External Affairs along with think tank Pune International Centre at Pune.The ridership of Delhi metro was 2.4 million per day 2.5 years ago when I was inducted as minister. Today, the ridership of Delhi metro is 6.5 million per day. If you calculate increase in Ola and Uber ridership during this period, we get good a picture of what mobility is about, during this period certain kinds of automobile have been sold in large numbers some are not selling due to technical specification undergoing a change,” said Puri.He added, “I am not prepared to believe that the figures I have cited; a Mckinsey study in 2010 showed that India is creating urban space equivalent to addition of one Chicago every year, the statistics of our flagship programmes shows that in the month of December, over 1 crore homes were sanctioned. All these do not look like economic slowdown. Delhi's population in next census will be more than 2 crores. The different schemes that I am involved with means new housing for 1.30 crore citizens of Delhi. This is the scale of the statistics.”The minister also gave examples of the civil aviation sector to refute that there is economic slowdown. “In case of civil aviation, India has the third largest domestic civil aviation market in the world, with a throughput of 435 passengers per year. We are looking at a billion passengers per year. In few years, we will be adding another 100 airports. A major airline ceased operations between December 2018 and April 2019. At that point of time, we had less than 600 civil aircraft, which have today increased to more than 750 aircraft. Every week, we are adding two to three civil aviation aircraft. Does this look like an economic slowdown?,”he aksed.Bhavish Agaarwal, founder-Ola spoke about how the Two Step Verification through OTP used in India for various online transactions has amazed the British citizens from London, where the ride sharing company launched its operations about a month ago. "We can use the same technology, the same business model and the same organisation set up that we have in India to go outside India. Use of OTP which is part of our life but not part of life in the western world, use of artificial intelligence and facial recognition to ensure you are driving with the same drive that you have booked your ride with have amazed people there."He also elaborated how the Indian mindset of working with regulators have been helpful while going global. "London has one of the most proactive and progressive regulators for the transport mobility. It was natural for us to collaborate with the regulators rather than disrupt. An Indian company doesn't think about disruption as there is not that much of legacy investments or legacy infrastructure. We have a co-creation mindset," said Aggarwal. NITI Aayog vice chairman Rajiv Kumar underlined the need for Asia to create brand new multilateral agencies. “The post-World War -II institutions, the Bretton Woods Institutions will not suffice to facilitate the emergence of the Asian economies again in the global context. So far, we had assumed that they would suffice and were trying to tweak these to facilitate emergence of Asia, I think time has come for us to say that this can no longer be taken for granted. Asia must now be prepared to think of conceiving institutions which are beyond Bretton Woods.”