Centre, States to ready ‘Make in India’ plan

PM, Ministers and Chief Secretaries to attend workshop

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Ministerial team and the Chief Secretaries of the States will prepare an action plan on Monday for turning the “Make in India” campaign into a manufacturing push. Captains of industry too are scheduled to participate in the workshop.

By the end of the day-long event, organised by the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion, the government is expected to have a to-do list for the coming Budget.

The action plan expected to emerge from the deliberations will cover a reforms agenda for the government for the next three years and the immediate time frame of a year.

This is the first such meeting being held, said an official source adding that Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and Commerce and Industry Minister Nirmala Sitharaman would speak.

“Over 16 sessions, all sorts of issues pertaining to taxation, labour laws and paperwork, etc., will be discussed in the sectors that the Index of Industrial Production is comprised of … there will also be a session on skills development.”

25 sectors identified

Twenty-five sectors, including textiles, automobiles, chemicals, information technology and pharmaceuticals, have been identified as focus segments.

In September, the Prime Minister launched the “Make in India” campaign in Delhi at which a number of global corporate leaders, from Mukesh Ambani of Reliance Industries Ltd. to Lockheed Martin India CEO Phil Shaw, had pledged to invest and manufacture in India in response to Mr. Modi’s call.

The pitch had its origin in the Prime Minister’s Independence Day speech when he invited global companies to pick India to locate factories, promising to replace red tape with a red-carpet welcome.