New York, Sep 23 (PTI): Pepsi Co Chief Indra Nooyi today described India's infrastructure appalling with projects there showing too much slippage in their execution, but emphasised that the country is a 'must invest market'. 

"If I use the word appalling that would be bit of an understatement," Nooyi said during the panel-discussion in New York organised by the Indian American Foundation and Yale University.

She said although there has been some development in infrastructure but the couple of highways and airport were not enough."I'm not saying developments have not been made but its not as fast as it needs to be...Unfortunately every project that starts, there is too much of slippage."

The Indian-born businesswomen stressed on the need for India to do a lot more to strengthen its basic infrastructure, for companies wanting to invest in India. "The first biggest issue we have is infrastructure."

Nooyi underlined that reaching every nook and corner of India require roads, electricity, power and water."Even if they have an MBA or an engineering degree unless they came from a top tier of schools they are not as qualified as they need to be...We always have to retrain them inside the industry," Nooyi said.

"I think we have to take this manpower, which is very bright but we have to make sure we educate them the right way," she continued.Fareed Zakaria, an international relations expert and journalist, pointed out that one of the reasons for the government’s complacency could be the fact that India's economic growth had come to easily.

"The East-Asian crisis was the moment, when all those East-Asian countries did massive reforms and in India you're getting 7 to 8 per cent growth without doing very much reforms has stalled in India," Zakaria said.

Rakesh Mohan, leading Indian economist who was also on the panel, countered this assertion by noting that any given time the argument of "not much is happening right now."

"You can't have bursts of reform every year. So it has to be now much more incremental reform in every area," he said.

Mohan, however, admitted that India had probably gone ahead with the easier reforms or "reforms by announcement" like de-licensing and removing trade barriers earlier, and was now stuck with the tougher ones.

"Now we have all are process reforms, which can't be done by announcement," he said.
Noting that India was aware of its problem, Nooyi added that the say:do ratio is a little bit out of whack.