Arun Kumar Das | 22 Jan, 2018
A government cannot run
industry and regulation on businesses should be kept to a minimum to
attract more foreign direct investment (FDI) and spur domestic
financing, according to a minister.
Commerce and Industry
Minister Suresh Prabhu said that a committee had been set up under
the chairmanship of the Secretary, Department of Industrial Policy
and Promotion, to look at regulatory issues.
"The
ultimate idea is that regulation should not stifle the possibilities
of investment. I get a sense now that people have again started
looking at investments," Prabhu told this correspondent in a
freewheeling interview here ahead of his visit to Davos for the World
Economic Forum's (WEF) annual conference.
Prabhu also
maintained that the government cannot run industry and a new
industrial policy was in the works aimed at reducing regulations and
promoting modernisation of existing industry. It will also seek to
encourage new and emerging industries, even those which are not seen
today.
The minister is slated to hold a series of
bilateral meetings with his counterparts from many countries,
including Australia and the UK, participating at the WEF in Davos,
besides holding meetings with leading business leaders from around
the globe in an attempt to attract more FDI into the country.
Taking
note of India's jump in the global "ease of doing business"
rankings from 130th place to 100th, Prabhu said the government was in
the process of initiating a number of measures, which might not have
been captured in this particular ranking study. "In the next few
years' time, we will see it (the ranking) improving again and again,"
he said.
Prabhu said the change in rankings was largely
because of the introduction of the goods and services tax (GST)
regime which was the single-largest and most significant reform
post-Independence. It was also "a great positive" step in
the direction of bringing transparency and greater reliability.
On
the core focus areas for India to boost exports, he said the
government was in the process of drawing up strategies across five
main components -- promotion of services, value-addition in goods,
focus on agriculture, improving standards, and logistics.
"We
have identified champion sectors with untapped potential for
value-addition, employment generation and technology upgradation to
promote services. Focus will be on improving the ease of doing
business across these sectors," he said.
India, he
said, was poised to become the third-largest economy in the world and
the onward journey of becoming a $5 trillion economy was "inevitable
and unstoppable".
"Today, global output is
higher than the global trade. We need to re-strategise our global
trade. India's journey towards achieving $5 trillion economy sooner
is not possible without expansion of our basket of global trade,"
Prabhu said.
Envisaging a new high in India's economic
scenario, he said: "If we grow by more than eight per cent we
will reach there in the next 6-7 years; if we grow by today's pace of
around 7 per cent we will reach there in 1-2 years more."
Asked
about the steps being taken to reduce India's logistics costs, Prabhu
said earlier there was no dedicated team dealing with logistics, but
Prime Minister Narendra Modi had taken the decision to create a
separate logistics division within the Ministry of Commerce and
Industry.
He said steps were being undertaken to create a
digital logistics platform for the industry to increase the speed of
movement of goods and reduce costs.
"If a consignment
is to be transported from, say, Mumbai to Kolkata, why not part-use
rail and part-use road? But the right decision can be made only when
we know the exact cost and time taken. A digital platform can make
that happen," he said.
Dwelling on the strategy to
boost the "Make In India" initiative, he said it will be
successful only if it happens at the state and district levels.
As
Railway Minister Prabhu had undertaken a programme of developing a
joint tourism circuit on the western coast of India, including the
Konkan and Goa regions.
Now as the Minister for Commerce
and Industry, he wants to take the Make-in-India concept to the
Konkan.