India a Risky Place for Business

A blog on the Klink site assesses the risks associated with doing business in India, which are many. Prime Minister Narendra Modi won election also with a promise to clean up corruption in government and business, but little has been done. Klink’s own experience based on due diligence investigations show strong and repeated patterns of government and commercial corruption in India. The established method of doing business includes bribing government officials to get contracts, punish competitors, obtain permits, and get better tax rates. In 2018, Prime Minister Modi was linked to the largest bank fraud case in India, in which the country’s second largest bank, Punjab National Bank, was defrauded of an estimated $2 billion. India is one of the world’s largest coal producers, and Modi’s party has thoroughly corrupted the processes of sales and mine allotment. The independent Comptroller and Auditor General of India reported that the country lost $33 billion through cheap coal sales. Similar scams have been involved in other sectors, including telecom. The Indian legal process is slow, unpredictable, and susceptible to corruption. Many experts suggest arbitration as a better alternative.