Industries Minister KT Rama Rao said Centre to constitute an empowered strategy group to identify and follow up on investment opportunities. In a series of tweets to Union Minister for Commerce and Industry Piyush Goyal, he proposed several measures that the Union government may consider to reboot and energise Indian economy to attract investments in the post-COVID scenario.
Rama Rao said the empowered strategy group should comprise representatives from the Central and State governments besides industry leaders, bankers, economists and policy experts. He pitched for a coordinated strategy to revitalise the economy on par with the combat against novel Coronavirus. “India has a great opportunity, let’s grab it aggressively,” he said.
The Industries Minister stressed for bold and essential reforms at the earliest including imbibing all best practices in Ease of Doing Business (EoDB) to propel India into top 20 in the world rankings. He proposed for updating old labour laws and brankruptacy laws apart from providing a guarantee and honour consistency in the State policies to investors.
Advertisements
He emphasised the need to focus on creating world-class industrial infrastructure in a mission mode over the next one year which includes large self-contained industrial parks and corridors, besides developing world-class ITIs and polytechnics (at least two-four for every State). “Capacity building in Infra and skills is vital,” he said.
Further, Rama Rao wanted the Centre to aggressively improve export competitiveness in priority sectors like pharma, aerospace, textiles, leather, IT and food processing. To achieve export competitiveness, he suggested certain measures including active scouting of markets, creating better deal than offers by competing nations, soft loans for procuring quality machinery, international training of staff, and attractive incentives on exports.
The Minister also requested the Centre to initiate measures to bailout micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs). He suggested for direct financial assistance for MSMEs in worst affected sectors. He proposed for easy and very soft credit for others, deferment of dues, and priority to MSMEs in government orders among other measures.
Advertisements
Rama Rao reiterated the need to scale up efforts to compete for opportunities in manufacturing sector and strongly felt that economies of scale will help the nation giving a competitive edge. He wanted the Union government to promote mega industrial parks like Hyderabad Pharma City and Kakatiya Mega Textile park as projects of national importance.