NEW DELHI, Nov 26, 2006 (AFP) - HIV-AIDS and potential water shortages pose the biggest risks to India's economic future, India's finance minister told an international economic forum Sunday.

India already has the world's highest HIV-AIDS caseload, with 5.7 million people living with the virus.

The problem with "the most frightening potential to get out of hand (in India) is HIV-AIDS," Finance Minister P. Chidambaram told the India Economic Summit, which drew industrialists and business figures from India and around the world.

"We must be more open about sex," Chidambaram said at the opening of the three-day summit organised by the Geneva-based World Economic Forum.

The meeting was exploring the most significant threats to the future of India's fast-growing economy, currently expanding at an annual rate of over eight percent.

"I think we are ducking the issue (on HIV-AIDs)," the minister said.

He added that until two or three years ago India's government "was in denial mode" over the issue of HIV in a country known for its traditionally prudish attitudes toward sex.

Chidambaram's statement came after the United Nations HIV-prevention body warned this month that under a worst-case scenario, the virus could spread to three percent of India's population of more than one billion in the next decade.

India's current infection rate is 0.9 percent.

India's government recently set out a new HIV strategy, under which it will spend 2.5 billion dollars over the next five years on prevention and treatment.

Water shortages posed the second-biggest threat to India's economic outlook, the minister said.

Indian "states are already nearly at war with each other over water", he said, referring to frequent bitter rows among states that erupt over sharing of water resources.

Some of the potential shortages could be tackled through desalination of water drawn from along India's coasts, as well as through recycling and more efficient management of water resources, he said.

"New efficient irrigation systems are needed," he said.

But if India tackled its water problems effectively its "precipitation is sufficient to meet its water needs," he added.

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