Kolkata, July 19: Hailing Prime Minister Narendra Modi, former British Prime Minister David Cameron on Thursday said that India is fortunate to have a leadership with clear vision, adding that the country should, however, focus more on developing skills and infrastructure.

"India is fortunate to have a leadership with a clear vision. When I met Prime Minister Modi I saw he has deeply thought about long-term problems," Cameron said in reply to a question at the Annual General Meeting of the Indian Chamber of Commerce here.

Earlier, in his speech, Cameron lauded Modi's flagship programme 'Skill India' but pointed out that such goals cannot be achieved by the government initiatives alone.

Terming India as the land of opportunities which has one of the fastest growing economies of its size, Cameron said that the prosperity of countries like India and UK depends upon markets to operate and enterprises to flourish.

"Britain became a successful economy through its desire to trade, invest, sell and innovate. While India by setting its enterprise free was able to lift 150 million people out of poverty in just two decades."

"India is one of the largest economies and is said to be one of the fastest growing economies of its size... for its further development the country should focus more on the development of infrastructure and skills development," he said.

Cameron termed protectionism and isolationism in the trade as major barriers to a country's growth and stressed the importance of free trade between nations for sustainable economic development.

"Such tendencies perceive free trade as a bad thing. It is as if someone at some point is winning, another person has to be loosing. But it does not necessarily be that way. Free trade is the key to a nation's success," Cameron said.

"No one in the G20 invests more in India than the UK and there is the no bigger foreign investor in the UK than India. We are proud of that because we benefit from each other's success," he pointed out.

Taking about the US-China trade war, Cameron said that instead of starting a trade war the UK aims to trade more with the communist giant and have a better business relationship.

Citing the example of South Korea that imparts skill training to 98 per cent of its students compared with 68 per cent in the UK and just two per cent in India, Cameron said that countries like India and UK need to invest more in skills development. Cameron also hoped that India would soon become a member of the United Nations Security Council.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Jul 19, 2018 04:12 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).