The Hindu : Business : Centre's move to boost labour-intensive sectors

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Jul 21, 2006

Business

Business

Centre's move to boost labour-intensive sectors

Action plan on manufacturing strategy will be prepared

— Photo: V. Sudershan

COMING TOGETHER: (from right): Industrialists Mukesh Ambani, Rahul Bajaj, Azim Premji, R. P. Goenka, Keshub Mahindra, Ratan Tata, S. K. Poddar and V. Krishnamurthy at a meeting of the Council on Trade and Industry with the Prime Minister in New Delhi on Thursday.

NEW DELHI: The Union Government will shortly launch a National Manufacturing Initiative to give a thrust to 20 key labour-intensive sectors such as IT hardware, textiles, SMEs and auto components.

After an hour-long meeting of Prime Minister's Council on Trade and Industry, Commerce Minister Kamal Nath said the Ministry along with the National Manufacturing Competitiveness Council would come up with the initiative.

The initiative would prepare an action plan on the National Manufacturing Strategy drawn up by the NMCC, which had identified focus areas to boost economic growth and employment generation. The areas included IT, drugs, leather, chemicals, ports, food processing, biotech, cement, steel and metals. Mr. Kamal Nath said one of the main sectors would be IT components as domestic demand for them was around $10 billion and expected to see a quantum jump in the coming years.

He said the council discussed the two reports of NMCC and Ratan Tata-headed Investment Commission. Industry honchos, which included Ratan Tata, Reliance Industries' chief Mukesh Ambani and Bharti group chairman Sunil Mittal, cited lack of proper infrastructure as a major impediment to manufacturing.

Mr. Kamal Nath said the Government planned to set up seven-eight manufacturing investment regions (MIRs), which would have world-class infrastructure at competitive rates.

He said such regions had the potential to push economic growth to 12 per cent from eight per cent and could attract investment of Rs 100,000 crore over the next few years. At least two States had already shown interest in hosting these regions, which would be spread over an area of up to 150 sq. km, he said. PTI

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Business