New Delhi: “A patent law along with an intellectual property law in various categories of copyright, trademark, right of publicity and others are imperative for shaping an open, democratic and market-based society,” corporate affairs minister Dr M. Veerappa Moily said while highlighting the importance of a patent system in a democracy at an ASSOCHAM event held here in New Delhi today.

“By recognizing that competition and intellectual property rights (IPR) inform each other, policy makers can use these competitive baselines to calibrate intellectual property rights to the particular market and social context and achieve desired policy goals,” said Dr Moily while inaugurating the ‘3rd Private Equity Convention-2012: India @ 9% Role of PE & VC’ organized by The Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM).

“Though competition law and IPR have converging ends, their interface is challenging due to apparent contradictions in their respective approach,” said Dr Moily.

“The belief that implementation of the new competition law should adopt a phased approach with hardcore cartels, abuses of dominance and related exclusionary behavior and anti-competitive agreements at the forefront followed by merger regulation has considerable merit owing to its technical complexity and political economy,” said the minister. “Merger review can be a particularly resource intensive, time consuming and politically complex process for inexperienced competition agencies.”

The ministry of corporate affairs would work closely with the industry to create an environment to enable the corporate community meet the multifarious global challenges while enhancing their competitiveness and engage proactively to facilitate corporate growth while ensuring a culture of good corporate governance and will work together towards restoring investor’s confidence in the Indian economy, said the minister.

“Considering that funds available with the government through the budget are limited, we need to attract more and more private sector funds for investment in infrastructure and social sectors like healthcare, education and renewable energy through corporates and private equity investors in India and overseas,” while releasing an ASSOCHAM-Deloitte study titled ‘Private Equity Fueling India’s Growth.’

“For this we need to create a welcoming climate and an conducive environment, more so as private equity is not passive investment and is long-term in nature,” said Dr Moily. “Besides, private equity investors add value to their investments in many ways including operational improvements and superior corporate governance in their portfolio companies.”

“The government Is focusing on pursuing public-private partnerships (PPP) to attract more private equity into PPP projects by following best practices in tendering and governance,” said the minister. “We will provide the PE funds with a platform to get their views and factor the same into our policymaking.”

“Simultaneously, we are mindful of the fact that PE investors seek stability of policies vis-à-vis taxation and other such factors concerning investor returns and thus we’ll pursue policy stability and enhancements to attract PE and enable fair and equitable treatment of local and international investors as regards to taxation,” said Dr Moily.

“We are committed to bring about a clarity and transparency in corporate regulatory framework for welcoming investments in India,” said the minister. “Besides, we are carrying on massive investor education programmes to improve the ratio of domestic savings to the capital market investment as currently about 90% of liquidity in capital market comes from just 10 cities across India.”

Highlighting the recent events resulting in slowdown of investment pattern globally, Dr Moily said, “This is a temporary phenomenon and things will soon improve.”

“For India to grow at 9%, the role of PE and government must go hand in hand, besides, we need to have a strong and vibrant capital market with transparent process, informed and aware investors and efficient grievance reressal mechanism,” said the minister. “We need to organize awareness campaigns to educate and inculcate financial literacy and for this I have also written to the ministry of human resources and development to promote it at the school level to get desired results.”

“We have forwarded the Reebok fraud case to the serious fraud investigation office (SFIO) for reinvestigation,” said the corporate affairs minister on being quizzed by the members of the media about the Rs 870 crore Reebok scam.

Among others who also spoke on the occasion included: Mr Venugopal Dhoot, past-president, ASSOCHAM; Mr Gautam Bhandari, chairman, PEVCAI; Ms Kalpana Jain, co-chairperson, PEVCAI; Mr Mukesh Agarwal, president, Crisil Research; Mr D.R. Mehta, former IAS and Mr D.S. Rawat, secretary general of ASSOCHAM.