Kolkata, May 3 (PTI) Foreign investors are looking to "de-risk" their businesses in China, the origin of the coronavirus pandemic, and India can take advantage of this proposition, a BJP leader said.

India has been able to contain the spread of the COVID-19 with "much less damage, given the potential of the disaster", the party's national vice president and spokesperson Baijayant Jay Panda said during an interaction with members of the Bharat Chamber of Commerce through a video-conference on Saturday.

"I have an optimistic outlook. Foreign investors are looking towards de-risking from China and India can take advantage of this opportunity," Panda was quoted as saying in a statement.

Asked about the reluctance of lenders to extend advances to small and medium enterprises, Panda said banks are "afraid" of increasing their lending to businesses despite several policy rate cuts by the Reserve Bank of India.

"The government might consider making specific funds for the businesses," he said.

He said the present COVID-19 crisis is not close to any other problem that the economy had faced earlier.

Responding to concern about payments of wages and power bills by the micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) during the lockdown period, Panda felt that the industry "could not be left inoperative for a long time and businesses cannot continue to pay their workers without work".

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)