India needs $250 billion FDI: ICICI Bank

Investments will power India's economic growth in the days ahead and the country needs about $250 billion in the next three years, ICICI Bank CEO and managing director Chanda Kochhar said on Wednesday.

"Our next driver of growth really is going to be investment and this is the time I am really seeing activity towards investment starting. That is what is different from last January (2009) and this January," she told PTI after arriving in Davos for the 40th edition of the World Economic Forum.

Although India is receiving robust portfolio investments (in stocks), what India needs is Foreign Direct Investments.

"I can at least see projects worth $250 billion which can get executed in the next 3 years," Kochhar said, relishing the change of mood in this year's WEF gathering from the sombre one last January.

"Last January most corporate had given up investment plans and said that we want to watch how the situation emerges," she said, adding the Indian brigade is much more optimistic this year than it was a year ago.

Kochhar attributed Indian optimism to country's inherent strengths which include large domestic market and young population as compared to other major economies of the world.

Having grown by over 9 per cent in the three years till 2007-08, India's economic growth slipped to 6.7 per cent in '09, mainly on account of the impact of the global financial meltdown that started in the US in 2008.