The Great Debates at Davos: Jump-starting confidence in the economy

It was expected that the global economic and Euro zone crisis would dominate the conversation at Davos this year, but this news seems to have created a greater urgency with regards to what needs to be done.

Everywhere, people are debating with each other where the opportunities are and how leaders should be positioning themselves to be influential.

Businesses seem to be stabilizing, but what are the governments doing? The last question seems to be the most pressing. The loss of trust in governments is a trending topic and this has been backed up by a PWC CEO report.

The survey found that CEOs are three times more confident in their own company’s growth prospect than the economy. So at Davos, the conversation must be about what governments need to do to revive that faith and how they must work with the corporate sector to achieve the growth that individual businesses are achieving.

Commercial businesses have now recognized that austerity and cost cutting is not enough. They must innovate and invest in new models, services, products and markets to achieve growth and succeed in today and tomorrow’s markets. Governments on the other hand must instill confidence back into their citizens and achieve stability through job creation and open trading.

I am sure there will be plenty of conversations held in the coming days on how businesses and governments together can create talent to address new demand, and then mobilize this talent to ensure a balanced global economy.

It was also recently predicted by Standard Chartered Bank that two thirds of the world’s growth up to 2030 will come from developing countries.

More than ever the western economies are relying on collaboration with emerging markets, such as Brazil, Russia, India and China BRIC countries, to help to recover the economy.

Representing an Indian company, I recognize the need for BRIC economies to collaborate with the west, and get more greatly involved at events like the World Economic Forum.

If we don’t, we’re missing out on a commercial opportunity.

There needs to be an increased business transparency with countries like China and Russia and by integrating our markets with the west, and investing cash flow in and out of these markets, the global as well as domestic economies will grow.

BG Srinivas is head of European operations at Infosys and member of the company board

Pic: World Economic Forumcc2.0