China’s dominance in the global supply-chain is a “worrying” factor as it can control pricing of most of the commodities and products, Bharat Forge Chairman and Managing Director Baba Kalyani said on Thursday.
Speaking at a virtual session at the MEA-PIC Asia Economic Dialogue 2022, hosted by Pune International Centre (PIC), Kalyani also said Asia has not only been leading the post-pandemic world but had been leading it even in the pre-pandemic world.
The theme of the sixth edition of the three-day annual conference is ‘Resilient Global Growth in a post-pandemic World’.
“It is my personal belief that China is an expert in exporting inflation. They produce a billion tons of steel, almost 65-70 per cent of the world steel production.
“It (China) starts buying iron ore at high prices, the whole steel market changes. It stops exporting steel, the whole steel market changes. So they can control pricing of most basic commodities and products,” Kalyani said at the session titled, ‘Can Asian Industry lead in the post-pandemic world?’
Stating that the same situation is with the APIs in the chemical business, he said, they can export inflation or they can control inflation. Right now they are exporting inflation.
Kalyani said that the whole increase in the steel prices was not due to the demand going up. It is just because China has decided to export inflation on the steel… And that is a very worrying factor in terms of China being the dominant player in the global supply chain, he stated.
The post-pandemic world has given some very interesting scenarios both geo-political as well as in terms of technology disruptions and how countries have tackled the pandemic issue itself, he said, adding, it is also in terms of how technologies have been developed, the speed at which they have been developed.
It has been quite an amazing journey in the last two years. Asia is already leading the post-pandemic world. I think it was leading even the pre-pandemic world. All of the Asia’s economy is greater than the rest of the world from 2020 onward, he said.
Stating that India has done remarkably well post-pandemic as it was able to handle all the issues related to the pandemic in the first six months after a three-months lock-down,
The 3-months lockdown gave us ample opportunity to create infrastructure, the healthcare system, and do whatever was required in a mission mode at pretty high speed, he said.
Most importantly India produced its own vaccines and now have three vaccine manufacturers, which is an indicator of what a country can do with everybody in sync with what needs to be done.
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It is time now to give back to this planet. I think that where Asia is going to score and that is where India will do extremely well, he said, exuding confidence that India will be the third largest economy globally by 2030-31.
Kalyani said that Indian industry will grow exactly in the same direction as did the industry in China, in the next 10 years except that the growth will be greener.
We will use more renewable energy, we will be more sustainable plus the big advantage India has that because of the industrial infrastructure being at such a low level, every thing new that we will build will be green, he said.
Kalyani said that there is a huge opportunity of moving from fossil fuel, coal or conventional energy systems to renewable energy systems, adding, that is why huge investments are taking place in India by the corporate sector in this space.
My own guess is that in the next 15-odd years, India will become the biggest renewable energy producer in the world and will start exporting green energy. That will be our point of inflection, he said.
