Ahead of the Union Budget, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Saturday promised to remove all barriers to growth and encourage Indian companies to become globally competitive, emulating the Chinese economic model.

"We must think big and think bold. We must move away from paradigm of incremental growth to a paradigm of exponential growth and growth into unchartered territory," he said, inaugurating the SCOPE-FICCI-CII Summit of Indian CEOs.

"Our motto should be to do as well as China in terms of growth of GDP, growth of manufacturing, growth of trade and growth of infrastructure," Singh said, hoping that India would become a major economic powerhouse.

Stressing that the country should move towards global scale in manufacturing and services sector, the prime minister said the success stories of public and private sector should be replicated so that more and more Indian firms go global.

Assuring to give more autonomy to public sector undertakings, he said: "We must strengthen their hands so that they can provide effective leadership and manage public resources more efficiently."

The government has made a clear commitment to empowering public sector enterprises and their managements.

"We have already given our commitment to help in the globalisation of our Navratnas, especially of firms in strategic sectors like energy. Both the Navratnas and other PSEs require competent managerial leadership," he said.