Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh touted his country"s rise as a global economic power Monday and said coordination of economic policies was critical as the world emerges from its deepest recession in a generation, according to dpa. Speaking to the US Chamber of Commerce in Washington, Singh said his country was "open for business" and called on US investors to help India build up its domestic infrastructure. US President Barack Obama will host Singh at the White House Tuesday. The global economy and climate change in the run-up to December"s United Nations-backed Copenhagen summit are high on the agenda. Emerging economies like India and China have been key drivers of global growth over the past year as industrial powers like the United States and Europe have suffered from massive economic slowdowns. Singh said the recession of the past year has shown that "managing a highly integrated global economy requires coordination and collective action on a global scale." Emerging powers had become "significant players" in that interplay. World leaders in September anointed the Group of 20 (G20), a bloc that includes leading industrial and emerging countries, as the premier forum for coordinating global economic policy, in a nod to the growing clout of countries like China and India. India has suffered from the global economic crisis, but not nearly as much as the industrial world. Singh said India"s economy was expected to grow more than 6 per cent in 2009 and 2010, and could return to its pre-crisis levels of around 9 per cent in the following years.
