ICICI Bank 2007 Annual Report Download - page 5

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Annual Report 2006-2007
Paradoxically, despite our large and expanding pool of human
capital, the most important question facing corporates today is
the low availability of manpower with relevant skill sets for the
jobs at hand. We need to focus on building an adequately trained
knowledge worker base through setting up and expansion of
institutions for higher education, and through curriculum change
as may be necessary. Only then can India’s demographic
advantage be truly realized.
The inconsistent performance of the agriculture sector needs
to be viewed with concern as sustaining and further enhancing
the current growth rates, and ensuring broad-basing of growth,
is dependent on improving economic conditions in rural India.
The performance of the agriculture sector weakened as
growth fell to around 2.0% in fiscal 2007 compared to the 6.0%
growth recorded in 2006. While focusing on improvements in
agricultural productivity and creating efficient farm-to-market
linkages, we need to create new economic opportunities and
employment generators in rural India and reduce dependence
on agriculture alone. This would involve equipping young people
in rural India with the skills that will enable them to engage
with the mainstream economy. This will align the proportion
of people directly dependent on agriculture to the capacity
of the agriculture sector to provide higher than subsistence-
level livelihoods, and create new income streams for the rural
population. The goal of bringing rural India into mainstream
economic activity is a challenge and the task before us is
enormous. However, we need to make focused efforts in
each of the above areas, starting with identified geographies
and areas of activity and going on to increase the scale of
operations. We can then indeed transform rural India into an
engine of growth.
ICICI Bank is seeking to participate in India’s growth process by
leveraging its strong competencies in various segments of the
business. We are continuing our focus on retail banking. We are
partnering Indian companies by providing the right product and
advisory skills to aid their rising global aspirations. Rural India
continues to be a significantly untapped market and presents
a major growth opportunity, which we are seeking to address
through innovative products and delivery mechanisms. We
seek to support this strategy with financial and human capital,
as we move to the next level in terms of scale of operations.
Looking ahead, we see ourselves as the premier provider of
financial services in India and to Indian customers overseas,
partnering our customers and the nation in achieving growth
and prosperity.
N. VAGHUL
Chairman