CHENNAI: The Chairman of the National Manufacturing Competitiveness Council (NMCC), V. Krishnamurthy, said here on Saturday that he was personally not inclined to support demands for any kind of protection or subsidy to small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

That is the only way to ensure that Indian industry learns to exploit its "natural advantages", Mr. Krishnamurthy said.

Delivering the valedictory address at the three-day Productivity Summit 2006 organised by the Indian Machine Tool Manufacturers' Association (IMTMA), he, however, agreed to study the suggestion made by the President of the association, C. P. Rangachar, for introduction of a law similar to the Sabatini Act of Italy or a British law under which SMEs were enabled to purchase CNC machines (when they first came on the scene in the seventies) on easy terms and without payment of interest on the principal.

Emphasising the importance that the present government at the Centre assigned to manufacturing as the main instrument of finding employment for millions of non-urban, non-English-speaking youth neglected by the service-sector-based economic growth of the past decade, Mr Krishnamurthy said manufacturing could not grow without the support of the machine tool industry. However, the latter hardly seemed to be prepared for the task, considering that even the largest unit in the metalworking/machine tool industry had a turnover not exceeding Rs. 200 crore, he said.

The former Chairman of Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd (BHEL) and Maruti Udyog pointed out that the Centre, in its latest initiative, had appointed a committee headed by the Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, to look into the needs of the manufacturing sector.

Dependence on imports

It was not a happy situation that two-thirds of the nation's requirement of machine tools were met by imports, he said, and called for investments in the sector. He said the Indian manufacturing industry had hardly tapped the potential for HR (human resource) development and IT (information technology) in areas like product development, innovation and customer satisfaction.

The Heavy Engineering Corporation and the Central Machine Tool Research Institute were languishing or working in isolation, and the Mining and Allied Machinery Corporation (MAMC) had remained closed, even while there was a huge untapped potential for the development of their user-industries, he added.

Mr. Rangachar said the IMTMA would present to the NMCC specific plans on funding for closing the "technology gap" in the metalworking industry. Mr. Krishnamurthy presented the IMTMA-Siemens Productivity Championship Awards.

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