India's GDP growth will be 8% in 2016-17: CII

The Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) on Thursday said India was expected to remain the fastest growing large economy of the world, adding that it was likely to register a GDP growth of around 8% in 2016-17.

"India's GDP growth will be 8% in 2016-17, thanks to the expected normal monsoons, positive global investor sentiments, high FDI inflows and low interest rates," said Naushad Forbes, president of the CII.

Addressing a press conference here today, Forbes said that the agriculture sector was expected to grow at 3%, while the industry and services are expected to grow at the rate of 8.2% and 9.8%, respectively.

Talking about CII's new initiatives for 2016-17, he said, "The CII has taken initiatives to establish PPP Start-up Centres in the States - a new model institution for end-to-end incubation of potential entrepreneurs to build future business houses generating large scale employments. This incubation program will promote non-IT and rural entrepreneurship."

Unveiling CII's theme for 2016-17 of 'Building National Competitiveness', Forbes said that to build national competitiveness, the CII had laid emphasis on six key areas: human development, corporate integrity and good citizenship, ease of doing business, innovation and technical capability, sustainability and global integration.

The CII had also identified six manufacturing sectors and 26 sub-sectors in which India can be number one or two in the world. They are: automotives, aerospace and defence, engineering, cement and steel, chemicals and pharmaceuticals and ICTE.

The CII would soon release a strategic roadmap for these sectors.

The CII is launching 10 pilot projects to scientifically manage municipal solid waste on a 'People-Public-Private-Partnership' mode.

The CII member-companies would invest in designing, developing, implementing and managing comprehensive, sustainable, scalable end-to-end waste management solutions.

This project would be scaled-up to 500 towns after the successful implementation of the 10 city-pilot projects.

The CII would launch WATSCAN, an advanced tool for water resources evaluation and management at the watershed level.

This tool had been developed by the CII to identify water generation, accumulation and losses in geographical areas.

The CII would apply WATSCAN in 50 districts in 10 drought-prone states over the next five years. The CII would take up and apply WATSCAN in four districts of Telangana.

The CII is launching Groundwater-Energy-Farmer Income programme to stabilise farmer incomes and resource, by incentivizing farmers to save water through energy savings.

The programme envisages the adoption of various water-energy saving measures by farmers, through which they can save energy (compared to the baseline usage) and sell back to the utility and in turn get compensated through direct transfers.

The CII is also working on 'Waste to Worth', a solid waste management project in ten cities, under the Swachh Bharat initiative.

Under Standup India, the CII would escalate work on Affirmative Action with Dalit Chamber of Commerce and Industry on education and vendor opportunities.

Talking about the legislative reforms, Forbes said that there is a need to bring in a political consensus to ensure early passage of Constitution Amendment Bill for the implementation of GST.

He urged the states to amend labour laws following the model set by Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, and Gujarat.

He also emphasized the need for other Indian states to emulate Tamil Nadu and Rajasthan in introducing land reforms.