The Hindu : National : V.Krishnamurthy may head council on manufacturing

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Sep 18, 2004

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National

V.Krishnamurthy may head council on manufacturing

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI, SEPT. 17. With the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs approving the constitution of a National Manufacturing Competitiveness Council (NMCC) today, the Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, is expected to nominate V. Krishnamurthy, a technocrat, as its chairman.

The proposal to set up the council emanated from the National Common Minimum Programme of the Government and is intended to be a continuing forum for policy dialogue to energise and sustain growth in the manufacturing sector. It is based on the understanding that economic reforms had exposed the manufacturing sector to greater domestic and global competition, resulting in a high growth of 14.1 per cent in 1995-96, which subsequently declined to a low of three per cent in 2001-02. India's share of manufacturing contribution, at 17 per cent, is low compared to China (35 per cent), Indonesia (25 per cent), Malaysia (31 per cent) and Thailand (34 per cent). The country's factor productivity of manufacturing even today is the lowest, being a fifth of the United States' and half of South Korea's and Taiwan's.

The council is expected to be an autonomous institutional set-up at the highest level, which will provide credible sector-specific policy inputs to the Government on a continuous basis. Apart from the chairman, the council will have five Secretaries of the Central Government in its second layer, representatives of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry, the Confederation of Indian Industries and the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry and other experts in the next layer, followed by management and technical institutions such as the IITs and IIMs and finally representatives of manufacturing industries like textiles, cement, automobiles, steel and pharmaceuticals.

Mr. Krishnamurthy has had a long and successful career in the public sector and has been the chairman of Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited, the Steel Authority of India Limited and Maruti Udyog. He is also a member of the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation and was recently nominated to the National Advisory Council headed by the Congress president, Sonia Gandhi.

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