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New Delhi, September 2 (IANS). Zoho chief scientist and co-founder Sridhar Vembu on Wednesday said Prime Minister Narendra Modi's appeal to curb foreign travel, gold purchases and extravagance is aimed at conserving much-needed foreign exchange due to India's dependence on imports during its rapid growth phase.

Making comparisons with East Asian economies, Sridhar Vembu said that India is also on the same path, where rapid expansion in GDP is accompanied by deliberate conservation of foreign exchange.

“If the economy is growing at 7.8 per cent, why is the Prime Minister asking us not to travel abroad, not buy gold, not marry abroad etc?”, Vembu said in a social media post. He argued that as India's economy grows, rapid expansion also increases the demand for imported energy and advanced technology inputs.

“In fact, the faster the economy grows, the greater the need for both energy and technology,” he said. He said the need for foreign exchange to pay for precision machines, materials, CPU, GPU and advanced software is also increasing.

Vembu said India's economy “is growing at a good rate, but our import dependence in key sectors still remains,” which the country will have to export more to balance.

“It takes time for all these regions to catch up, often measured in decades. We have made a good start, but we need time. Look how long it took East Asia to catch up with the West. Their economies were growing rapidly while they were working hard to conserve foreign exchange,” Vembu said.

The Zoho co-founder said the government wants to achieve this by banning unnecessary foreign travel and gold purchases.

He said, “Once we achieve proficiency in all advanced technologies and achieve energy independence through renewable energy, for which we develop technology, we will no longer need to conserve foreign exchange.”

–IANS

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