Press Information Bureau

Government of India

Ministry of Commerce & Industry

14-July-2011 17:13 IST

States Should Gear up to benefit from NMP: Anand Sharma Meets FICCI Delegation on Industry Concerns

The Union Minister for Commerce & Industry, Shri Anand Sharma has said that it should be our collective national endeavour to restore investor confidence. He stressed that Interventions should be made before perception of slowdown aggravates further. “Industry has raised concerns which we take on board. Time has come for Industry and Government to work together to change perception and also bring a turn around as far as industrial production is concerned”, he said. The Minister added that there is a need to “take steps and measures to see that India continues to remain an attractive destination for investment.” He made these observations at a meeting with a delegation of Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) here today. The interaction was part of the Minister’s engagement with the Industry on various related issues including FDI inflows, FDI Policy, decline in manufacturing output to take on board industry concerns.

Industry raised concerns with regard to high credit cost, investment slow down, skill shortage, high input cost, hurdles in getting various clearances, environmental issues and debottlenecking of logistics. They called for galvanizing long term debt market and address the labour market rigidities. They also asked for broadening of definition of infrastructure to bring in more areas for tax and other benefits. The Minister said that he shares the industry’s concern on high cost of credit and is engaged with the Finance Ministry for remedial measures. He called upon the industry to take full benefit of various measures of rationalization in the FDI regime such as simplification of documentation, rise in caps and concessions in downstream investments.

On National Manufacturing policy he reiterated that CoS under the Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister is fine tuning the Policy that has been given in-principal approval by the high level committee chaired by the Prime Minister. He said that the policy is inevitable now and states should be ready to benefit from it. In fact states like Rajasthan, Maharashtra and Gujarat are already gearing up to be benefitted by the proposed NMIZs, he added.

DS/GK

National Manufacturing Policy urges states to prepare to attract investment while industry uses FDI simplification measures. The Minister urged coordinated government-industry action to restore investor confidence and counter declining industrial output, noting industry concerns over high credit cost, investment slowdown, skill shortages, input and logistics bottlenecks, regulatory and environmental clearance hurdles, and labour market rigidities. He encouraged firms to use recent FDI rationalisation measures-simplified documentation, increased caps and downstream concessions-and stated the National Manufacturing Policy is being fine tuned, calling on states to prepare to benefit from proposed National Manufacturing Investment Zones.