Industry representatives, who are in New Delhi as part of a 150-strong British delegation to lobby with New Delhi to open up the financial sector, said protection to the domestic services sector needs to go if India wants the best of globalisation.
Leading audit, tax, financial and business advisory services firm KPMG, which operates in India as KPMG India, said its global clients with operations in the country were resisting the idea of KPMG India signing off deals.
"They (corporate clients) want just one firm (KPMG) to handle the operations," KPMG head of public policy, David L Gardner told PTI.
"If the restrictions are lifted, we could recruit three times more Indian students than we do at present," he said, adding that Indians would benefit by way of international training in a booming financial services market.
The delegation, which comprises representatives of legal services firms, would also mount pressure on India to open up this sector too for foreign investments.
"It is a catch-22 situation. On one hand India wants $320 billion for its infrastructure sector and on the other there is no FDI in legal services, there is limit on FDI in insurance... holding up services sector is actually holding up infrastructure," Lord Karan Bilimoria, co-chairman of the Indo-British Partnership Network, said.
While admitting that India had adopted global accounting practises, The Institute of Chartered Accountants (England & Wales) Head of International Affairs Jean Ettridge said New Delhi has to update its laws to suit the changes in the industry.
"Indian laws (owing to its colonial past) are similar to those in the UK, but they haven't been updated," she said, adding India has been slow in responding to the demand for liberalisation in the financial space.
"Wider financial reforms like allowing foreign banks to acquire Indian banks would be slow to come, but we expect restrictions to be lifted in accountancy services," Gardner said.
The delegation, accompanying UK Secretary of State for Trade and Industry Alistair Darling, is the largest team without a head of state and comes ahead of the visit of Chancellor Gordon Brown on Wednesday.
