Mumbai's bid to be global finance hub laden with hurdles

By Catherine Bosley

MUMBAI (Reuters) - With one of Asia's largest slums, congested streets and sometimes startling whiffs of human waste, Mumbai may not be everyone's first choice for a world-class financial centre.

Yet that is exactly what India hopes it will become in the next decade as it rises to the challenge of financing one of the world's fastest growing major economies after China.

"I think we are where China was with a lag of maybe 10 years," K.V. Kamath, chief executive of ICICI Bank, India's largest private bank, told a conference recently.

"That is the catch-up time that we need to build various structures whether they are financial or whether they are real ... to provide the sort of momentum that we need."

Formerly known as Bombay, Mumbai is a bustling port on India's west coast. Home to 17 million people, it is already a base for two stock markets, their watchdog and the central bank.

The city which overlooks the Arabian Sea is the face of old and new India: bullock carts toil alongside shiny sedans, shanties slope from walls near glazed offices, and sea vistas take your breath away with the low-tide stench of sewage.

But India's central government envisages a time when Mumbai will be a gleaming financial hub not too far removed from London, Dubai and Singapore.

To this end it has appointed a panel to study ways of turning Mumbai into the sort of place where a high-rolling banker might want to live.