India less affected by recession: Sharma

Union Commerce and Industry Minister Anand Sharma said that India has been less affected by the current global economic crisis due to the economy's strong fundamentals.

"The current economic crisis has affected countries across continents -- some more adversely, some less adversely.

Without quantifying details India may be one of the countries less adversely affected because of the sound fundamentals of its economy," Sharma said on Thursday while interacting with the media here on completing his trip to Washington.

That is the reason why, he argued, India has had (foreign direct investment) inflows, which is encouraging. "In the month of May itself we had $ 2 billion of FII (foreign institutional investors) money into India, this is because of the stability and strength of the Indian economy, which is reassuring to the Indian investor," Sharma said.

At the same time, Sharma said it is also very clear that India has been adversely affected in certain sectors, mainly exports, which have dropped by 30 per cent. This needs to be corrected, he said.

"For that we need to make our exports attractive and competitive . . . because many of the exports which have been impacted are directly connected to the labour-intensive industry, leading to loss of jobs," he said.