New Delhi: Suresh Prabhu, Union Minister for Commerce and Industry, on Monday said that the draft of revamping the Industrial Policy of 1991 is ready and asserted that it didn’t matter whether it gets announced “before or after the elections” as the “BJP is going to storm back into power”.
Speaking at a session titled ‘India Ahoy: Growth and Gumption’ at the News18 Network's Rising India Summit 2019, Prabhu said: “It’s already done…it’s now waiting for the cabinet’s approval. It’s just a matter of time.” He added that it was immaterial “whether we do it now or after the election”.
The proposed policy aims to promote the emerging sectors and modernising existing industries. It will also look to reduce regulatory hurdles and encourage adoption of frontier technologies such as robotics and artificial intelligence. The Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) in August last year floated a draft industrial policy with an aim to create jobs for the next two decades, promote foreign technology transfer and attract USD 100 billion FDI annually. This will be the third industrial policy after the ones released in 1956 and 1991.
Union ministers Ravi Shankar Prasad and Piyush Goyal, who shared the stage with Prabhu, also asserted that the BJP would return to power after the 2019 Lok Sabha elections to carry the party’s economic and industrial agenda forward.
This Prabhu argued would look to particularly increase deregulation and create industrial corridors. On the latter, he explained, “We are going to offer country specific industrial corridors,” while adding that this would allow industry to contribute more to the GDP in absolute terms.
The present period, Prabhu maintained, was an unprecedented time for global trade and in spite of obstacles India had performed exceedingly well. “Firstly, we are already moving up...generally, this is an unprecedented time for global trade and in spite of that our exports are growing. We are going to register our highest export ever and in addition to that we are looking at how we can get new markets and new product,” he claimed.
Prabhu argued for the need to create policy changes, that looked to increase global trades by finding new markets. “And this needs to be done by looking at new products,” he said and added that the government was exploring new markets in Latin America and Africa.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will lead from the front at the Rising India Summit 2019, delivering the keynote address at the flagship event of India’s biggest media network, which, this year, is taking place against the backdrop of the Pulwama massacre and the upcoming general elections, and is, therefore, aptly themed ‘Beyond Politics: Defining National Priorities’.
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