Govt priority include enhancing manufacturing, improving infra

Enhancing manufacturing, improving infrastructure and encouraging defence production figure among government's biggest priorities so that growth gets a boost and more jobs are created.
Listing challenges and priorities of their departments, Secretaries of Commerce, Labour, Industry and Defence Production said government has taken several steps to boost economic growth and are in the process of taking several more measures.
"My main challenge today is to see how defence production is transformed in a such a manner that private sector has a major role to play and we have a vibrant defence industry in place especially that is led by the private sector.

"So our immediate challenge is of course creating a level playing field for the public and private sector because as you know the public sector is dominant in defence production and we would like to see that a level playing field is provided to the industry," Secretary, Defence Production, G M Kumar said.
Secretary in the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) Amitabh Kant said manufacturing has to be the key driver of India's growth.
"Unless and until manufacturing does not grow in India, forget India growing to 9-10 per cent per annum for a long period. No country in the world has ever grown without manufacturing growing at higher rates," Kant said.

He also asked the industry to pay good salaries to engineers so that "engineering and manufacturing becomes a very key driver of India's growth".

On the land acquisition issue, Kant said that government is working on that.
"Some of the issues are very very complex...Mr Jairam Ramesh has created such a complex, such a complicated difficult land law bill. It's the most complex bill ever drafted in the history of the world. It is very difficult to set it right. This will take time," he added.
Similarly, Commerce Secretary Rajeev Kher said the real challenge is to enhance infrastructure, labour productivity and improving skills.

Kher said the Commerce Ministry is working on several initiatives including that on SEZs.
Labour and Employment Secretary Gauri Kumar too said that her ministry has taken many steps to improve ease of doing business in the country.
In October, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has unveiled a string of labour reforms, including measures to end 'inspector raj'.
She expressed hope that all the states would come on board so that the compliance issues becomes easy and industry use that platform.
"I feel industry needs to see labour as a partner rather than an adversary," she said.
The secretaries were speaking at a Ficci function.