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To sustain an economic growth rate of 9%, the manufacturing sector must grow at a rate of 10-12% annually, Commerce and Industry Minister Anand Sharma said today.
"It is indeed a matter of serious concern that manufacturing has grown at only 0.9% this fiscal", he said addressing the Indian Institute of Management here.
India has made its presence felt globally, yet even now it cannot boast of one global brand of manufactured goods even when countries like South Korea, Taiwan, China have plenty of them, Sharma said.
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In order to address this challenge, Sharma said the government has consciously given a concerted thrust to manufacturing and the National Manufacturing Policy unveiled in October 2011 was perhaps one of the biggest policy roll outs of recent times.
This policy seeks to raise the share of manufacturing to GDP from 16-25% within a decade and create 100 million productive jobs, he said.
Indian manufacturing has grown in strength over the years but has largely been confined to industries which are labour intensive such as textiles, leather, gems and jewellery, Sharma said.
The German leadership of global manufacturing has been driven by a huge push on investments in technology and this is an area where Indian enterprise would need to reinvent themselves and carve a niche in the global market place, Sharma said. "We have the human resource which can enable this transformation," he said.
Sharma said latest projections indicate that this year, the global growth will be weak at 3.5%, almost at the same level as last year.
"What is even more worrisome is the slowdown in growth of developing economies, which grew at 5.1% last year, registering perhaps the slowest growth in the last decade," he said.
