Measures to stimulate the economy through infrastructure growth and job creation in MSMEs were the main areas of discussion during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s interaction with economists and industry experts here on Saturday.

Sources said the economists pressed the need to stimulate the economy by public investments in infrastructure and encourage MSMEs with sops and measures to boost job creation.

They said some of the measures suggested could find reference in the budget to be presented on July 5, while some others would require policy measures to be taken in the course of the next few weeks.

Further opening up of the banking and insurance sectors for FDI, speeding up the divestment process and management of water resources were the other key issues to be discussed.

Over 40 economists and experts participated in the interactive session organised by Niti Aayog on “Economic Policy — The Road Ahead”.

N. Chandrasekaran of Tata Sons, T. V. Narendran of Tata Steel, Vedanta’s Anil Agarwal, ITC’s Sanjiv Puri, Vijay Shekhar Sharma of Paytm and Devi Prasad Shetty of Narayana Health were among the industry leaders present at the meeting. Bimal Jalan, Soumya Kanti Ghosh of the SBI, Bibek Debroy, Surjit Bhalla, Dharmakirti Joshi of Crisil, Sajjid Chinoy of JP Morgan and Sonal Varma of Nomura were among the economists and experts.

Modi in a tweet said he had a fruitful interaction with the economists and experts. “The inputs received were insightful and will benefit our growth trajectory,” he tweeted.