India must shun 'holier than thou' approach: Saraswat

NITI Aayog member V K Saraswat today said India should not try to appear "holier than thou" with respect to incentives offered to foreign companies at the cost of domestic industry.
Saraswat added that issues such as higher interest rates, power tariff and transportation cost, among other, were impediments to Indian industry's growth.
He was speaking at the 10th Statistics Day celebrations organized by C V Rao Advanced Institute of Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science at University of Hyderabad.
"There will be lower railway tariff on goods that is meant for exports and within the country from station A to Station B the tariff is higher. You can't have such discrepancies and make your industry unviable. It will remain unviable if your interest rates are 14 to 18 per cent, if your transportation cost is very high, if your cost of giving power is Rs 17 to Rs 18 to diesel generator sets.

If you are going to do that, how is it in a free market economy, Indian goods will survive. The impact of this is well established, industries are going down. So do we have the right platform for India to really embark on an unwise holier than thou free market economy? That's the question I am raising to all of you," Saraswat said in his speech.
He said the performance of Indian electronics sector is going down due to stiff competition from international giants.
According to him, the value addition in the industry is at about 5 to 7 per cent and by allowing foreign direct investment, it may not be more than 5 to 10 per cent.

"Apple has been given a moratorium of three years that they can completely import 100 per cent components for assembling, I think, the Apple iPhones. After three years what happens... It will come out with another model and say it is a new model so I need moratorium for that model," he said indirectly referring to the recently announced FDI norms for single-brand retailers.