Saurabh Gupta | 18 Apr, 2016
Against this backdrop of a rapidly growing ecosystem, Ministry of Commerce and Industry, in partnership with Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and Services Export Promotion Council (SEPC), is organising the second edition of the Global Exhibition on Services (GES) 2016 from April 21-23, at Greater Noida, informed CII at a press conference on Monday.
"GES 2016 will be inaugurated by Hon'ble President of India, Pranab Mukherjee, on April 20, 2016," said Virendra Gupta, Deputy Director General, CII.
He said, "The focus sectors in 2016 are – Banking & Financial Services ; Education ; Environmental Services; Green Building / Architectural Services ; Healthcare; IT & Telecom; Logistics; Media & Entertainment; Next Gen Cities; Professional Services / Legal; Quality / TPM Services; R & D; Retail; Skills Expo; SMEs in Services; Space; Tourism & Hospitality."
In the global context the importance of the Services sector cannot be emphasized more. It contributes more to the global output and employs more people than any other sector - globally, services contribute almost one-third of world gross value added, half of world employment, one-fifth of global trade and more than half of the world foreign direct investment flows.
The services sector has thus emerged as the most dynamic sector of the world economy.
It remains the key driver of India's economic growth, contributing almost 66.1 percent of its gross value added growth in 2015-16, important net foreign exchange earner and the most attractive sector for foreign direct investment inflows.
"The service sector is going through revolutionary change, which dramatically affects the way in which we live and work. New services are continually being launched to satisfy our existing needs and to meet needs that we did not even know we had," Director CII, Ranjit Jabbi told SME Times.
In India, the sector is surging ahead and contributed to 66.1 percent of the gross value added growth in 2015-2016. The share of India's services exports in global services exports, at 3.2 percent in 2014, is nearly double that of its merchandise exports in global merchandise exports at 1.7 percent.
"Services remain resolutely one of the key drivers of India's economic growth 53 percent to GDP; 51 percent to FDI; in 2014-15, while total FDI equity inflows grew by 27.3 percent to US$30.9 billion, FDI equity inflows to the services sector grew by a whopping 70.4 percent to US$16.4 billion. The sector is central to financing our merchandise trade deficit," added Jabbi.
Ministerial delegations are expected from several countries - already almost 40 countries, 80 buyers from service sectors, 200 exhibitors and 15 Indian states, 20 PSUs, over 50 international companies have confirmed their presence and many more are expected over the next few weeks.
Pre-fixed meetings between businesses, governments and stakeholders will make their time in GES especially fruitful.
Some main highlights this year would be a media and entertainment content market for the first time ever in the capital, a healthcare and a tourism mart to bring stakeholders together over MoUs and B2Bs, a food festival to represent cuisines of the world and spectacular cultural shows organized by ICCR and the I & B Ministry.
GES will catapult the services sector into the global radar and reinforce the role of the services to become the key growth driver of India's economic trajectory.
