India found itself 'let down miserably' during Covid, says Piyush Goyal

Goyal said India was left without essential equipment during the pandemic, prompting the push for self-sufficiency

By Anup Roy and Aryan Gupta

 

India opted to double down on self-sufficiency after Covid, when it was unable to source essential equipment to deal with the pandemic and found itself “let down miserably” by other countries, Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal said Wednesday.

 

“During Covid, we really recognized the vulnerabilities that a nation like India, a large nation of 1.4 billion people, had to go through when supply chains were broken,” Goyal told the New Economy Forum in New Delhi. “Wherever we had placed orders for personal protective equipment or Covid kits or vaccines, we were let down miserably by all countries.”

 

The criticism was not directed at any particular nation, he clarified. 

 

“When we needed Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, the West refused to give it to us,” he said. “They even refused to make an application to get the vaccine into the Indian market, even though we were willing to waive all the conditions, so it’s a global phenomenon.”

 

In response to that experience, Prime Minister Narendra Modi “gave the clarion call for Atmanirbhar Bharat, self-sufficient India,” Goyal said.

 

Bloomberg reported in July that the Ministry of Commerce and Industry was preparing a list of more than 100 products, including electronics, chemicals, key drugs, fertilizers, semiconductors, automobiles and machinery, where domestic production could be scaled up to reduce reliance on imports.

 

Earlier at the forum, Goyal’s colleague Ashwini Vaishnaw, minister for electronics and information technology, said the country now manufactures 100% of the components for many products it needs.

 

The nation is moving from “the finished product to modules to the components to the materials, and to the capital equipment,” Vaishnaw said. The same approach is being followed in semiconductors, railways and other industries, he added.