The rate of industrial growth, measured in terms of Index of Industrial Production (IIP) increased by 4.0 per cent during April-September, 2015-16 as compared to the growth of 2.9 per cent during the same period of previous year i.e. 2014-15. All the three industrial sectors viz. mining, manufacturing and electricity have registered positive growth during April-September in the current year.

 The Government has taken a number of measures including administrative and regulatory, to accelerate the growth of industrial sector. For creation of conducive business environment, the Government is constantly simplifying and rationalizing the processes and the procedures for boosting investor sentiment, simplifying the policy and procedures for encouraging Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and correcting the inverted duty structure.

 Some of the recent initiatives also include pruning the list of industries that can be considered as defence industries requiring industrial license, two extensions of two years each permitted in the initial validity of three years of the industrial license to take it up to seven years, removal of stipulation of annual capacity in the industrial license, and deregulating the annual capacity for defence items for Industrial License. For defence projects validity of industrial licenses has been increased to 15 years, which can be further increased to 18 years.

 With a view to liberalise and simplify the FDI policy, so as to provide ease of doing business in the country leading to larger FDI inflows, the Government has brought in FDI related reforms and liberalisation in a number of major sectors of the economy. Changes introduced in the policy include increase in sectoral limits, bringing more activities under automatic route and easing of conditionalities for foreign investments.

 The Government has launched the e-biz Mission Mode Project under the National e-Governance Plan which has simplified procedures and as on date provides 29 G2B (Government to Business) services - 18 Central and 11 State/Municipal services, online. The Delhi Mumbai Industrial Corridor (DMIC) project is under implementation. In addition, the Government has conceptualized Amritsar Kolkata Industrial Corridor, Chennai-Bengaluru Industrial Corridor, Bengaluru Mumbai Economic Corridor and the Vizag-Chennai Industrial Corridor (as the first phase of an East Coast Economic Corridor), and setting up a National Industrial Corridor Development Authority (NICDA) for coordinating and overseeing progress of the various industrial corridors.

 The Government has also launched “Make in India” programme with 25 thrust sectors to provide a major push to manufacturing in India. An Investor Facilitation Cell has been created viz ‘Invest India’ to assist, guide, handhold and facilitate investors during the various phases of business life cycle. This Cell provides necessary information on vast range of subjects; such as policies of the Ministries and State Governments, various incentive schemes and opportunities available, to make it easy for the investors to make necessary investment decision. Information on 25 thrust sectors has been put up on ‘Make in India’s web portal (http://www.makeinindia.com) along with details of FDI Policy, National Manufacturing Policy, Intellectual Property Rights and Delhi Mumbai Industrial Corridor and other National Industrial Corridors.

 This information was given by the Minister of State(Independent Charge) in the Ministry of Commerce & Industry Smt. Nirmala Sitharaman in a written reply in Rajya Sabha today.

FDI liberalisation expands automatic approvals and eases conditions to promote industrial investment and ease of doing business. The Government attributes higher industrial output to policy reforms that liberalise Foreign Direct Investment-including broader automatic approvals and eased conditionalities-and to industrial licensing relaxations such as pruning defence coverage, removing annual capacity requirements, extending license validity, and special longer terms for defence projects; complementary measures include e governance G2B services, an Investor Facilitation Cell, the Make in India programme, and development of National Industrial Corridors overseen by a coordinating authority.