GEs outgoing India head upbeat about reform

BANGALORE (AFP) - General Electric's outgoing India CEO Scott Bayman says he is confident politics won't alter the course of economic reform that has changed the face of a country he made his home for 14 years.

Bayman, 60, whose retirement was announced on Tuesday, took the helm of the US giant in India two years after a bankrupt government reversed decades of socialist-style economic policies that shut the doors on foreign investors and fettered private enterprise.

He has watched a variety of coalition governments riven by factional rivalries come and go and witnessed the transformation of the nation of 1.1 billion people into an emerging economic powerhouse.

"I have been here through six governments and five prime ministers," New Delhi-based Bayman said in a phone interview with AFP on Tuesday. "Certainly I can say today that liberalisation is not dependent on any one political party."

During Bayman's Indian tenure, overseeing businesses ranging from jet engine sales to consumer loans and water to power plants, the pace of economic reforms has varied as the nation passed through an era of coalition governments.

Resistance from leftist allies has forced Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's Congress party-led government, in power for three years, to put on hold moves to fully open up the retail industry to foreign companies.

It has frozen asset sales and stalled banking and insurance industry reforms.

But the spirit of reform is here to stay regardless of politics, said Bayman, who swears by the potential of an economy that has expanded at a yearly pace of 8.5 percent for the past three years the most after China.

"I think this country has a terrific future," the GE executive said. "For an emerging economy, the country risk is very attractive you got a very strong regulatory environment, the rule of the law, a strong domestic market.

"India isn't very dependent on exports so it can sustain an external downturn better than most. And manufacturing is proving to be a powerful force, as much as IT-enabled services."

For Stamford, Connecticut-based General Electric, India has become the fastest growing market in the world, after once being an often frustrating place to do business.

"We were initially disappointed by the lack of growth and market size," said Bayman.

"Some others left but we said we are going to stick it out," he added. "Today it's looking much more like what we thought it would be."

A 300 million-strong middle class that prospered as the economy grew and incomes rose has been at the forefront of the economic change.

Indians are travelling more by plane, opting for better-quality healthcare and taking loans.

"We have got growth pretty much across the board," Bayman said. "Infrastructure first, jet engines, oil and gas, energy, healthcare, financial services... we are not dependent on any one particular business."

From one billion dollars of sales in 2005, GE India expects to log close to three billion dollars in revenue this year, a figure that it expects to swell to eight billion dollars by 2010, Bayman said.

Bayman will hand over to Tejpreet Singh Chopra, a 10-year GE veteran and the first Indian to be given the conglomerate's top job in the country.