India to attract Chinese MNCs at strategic dialogue next month

India will showcase investment opportunities to Chinese multinationals, which are shifting base to other nations due to rising labour cost at home, at the India-China Strategic Economic Dialogue next month.
Besides, there will be deliberations on cooperation in the areas of highways, railways and urban development in view of India's thrust on developing smart cities and push to infrastructure development in the country to achieve high economic growth.
The big delegation of 220 businessmen and government officials led by National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) Chairman Xu Shaoshi will participate in the two-day Dialogue on October 6-7, 2016, NITI Aayog Vice-Chairman Arvind Panagariya told reporters here.

Panagariya said that Chinese multinationals are shifting their base from China to other countries in order be more cost effective in view of high labour costs.
He told that the annual minimum manufacturing wage cost per head in China is around Rs 5 lakh, which are promoting MNCs to migrate to other countries offering better prospects.
There are five working groups under the dialogue-- energy, resource conservation and environment protection, infrastructure, high technology and policy coordination.

The panel on energy is led by Oil Ministry. NITI Aayog has proposed that the group should be led by Ministry of New and Renewable Energy where in solar and module manufacturing under 'Make in India' programme can be taken up.

It has also asked the Chinese counterpart NDRC to consider another working group on coal, led by Coal Ministry, to pursue surface coal gasification.
"They have agreed to formulate two subgroups on renewable energy and coal gasification under the energy panel," Panagariya said.
The thinktank has also pitched for a working group on urbanisation to be led by Ministry of Urban Development in view of India's smart city programme.
Panagariya told that they have included China Urban Construction Design & Research Institution in the SED delegation in view of our proposal to have separate working group on urbanisation.
The Aayog has suggested to create two separate groups on railways and highways to led by respective ministries of railways and road transport & highways respectively.

Panagariya said that the dialogue would also focus on electronic manufacturing along highways and seek more cooperations on new areas like coastal manufacturing initiatives.
Asked about the incentive suggested by NITI Aayog for Coastal Economic Zones, he said that investors can be given benefits or exemptions on corporate profit tax provided they assure creation of certain level of employment.