Manufacturing key to India's future: OECD economist

India needs to strengthen its manufacturing activities as well as reform labour laws to ensure good growth, Paris-based think tank OECD's Chief Economist Catherine L Mann said today.
"Negative exports, deteriorating competitiveness and structural challenges, like labour laws and land acquisition, along with poor infrastructure quality and uncertainty to financing it and building it are acting as barriers to India's growth," Mann said.
Manufacturing was indeed the key to India's future, she said while presenting the findings of the 'Third OECD Economic Survey of India', hosted by the Centre for Public Policy at IIM-B, in association with Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

"Modernising labour laws is crucial to encourage employment formalisation and to reduce labor market segmentation, gender bias and income inequality. While the services sector in India looks robust, manufacturing does not," she was quoted as having said by IIMB in a release.
The release said Mann, who presented the findings of the 'Third OECD Economic Survey of India', hosted by the Centre for Public Policy at IIMB, in association with OECD today, offered a brief description of the aims and goals of the OECD and listed the challenges, as examined by the survey, to India's growth story.