Suresh Prabhu, who took charge as the Commerce and Industry Minister on Monday, held a ‘review meeting’ with the Ministry officials.
His appointment comes in the backdrop of India’s goods exports falling for the fifth consecutive month (in July 2017) on a month-on-month basis and at a time when questions are being raised about the government’s flagship programmes — Make In India (MII) and Start-up India initiatives — due to their inability to boost employment and investment as expected when they were unveiled amid much fanfare.
According to the Nomura Group, “(India’s) trade data (in July) suggest underlying weakness in both export and import volume growth. We believe this could be due to the supply-chain disruption triggered by transition to the Goods and Services Tax regime, while some of the more persistent weakness in labour intensive exports (despite steady global demand) suggests competitiveness issues.” On the MII, a Parliamentary panel had recently said though the government had taken many measures including Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) policy reforms, MII and Start-up India, “...it will serve better to remember that most of these initiatives are now more than two years old and the manufacturing growth has not yet gone to the desired level.”
Besides, India’s negotiations on several proposed Free Trade Agreements are facing delays – including those with Australia, New Zealand, Canada, European Union, Israel, Mauritius, Indonesia, Thailand, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, European Free Trade Association, Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation as well as with the Gulf Cooperation Council.
Official sources told The Hindu that Mr. Prabhu will soon be holding separate meetings with each division of his Ministry to get a deeper understanding of the outstanding issues. They said Mr. Prabhu was keenly listening to the presentations and discussions which only gave a big picture analysis.
Most of the files will have to be re-submitted to the new Minister for him to take a fresh look at the issues and fix new dates for further meetings, they added. Meanwhile, C.R.Chaudhary took charge as the Minister of State for Commerce and Industry and attended the ‘review meeting’ with Mr. Prabhu. There were two separate meetings — one with Commerce Department and another with the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion. In the works are a new ‘future-ready’ Industrial Policy that will incorporate steps to facilitate the use of modern smart technologies such as Internet of Things, artificial intelligence and robotics for advanced manufacturing to transform India into a global manufacturing hub. The new policy will subsume the National Manufacturing Policy. Also in the pipeline are a slew of reforms on the FDI policy including in sectors such as retail (single brand and multi-brand), e-commerce, construction and print media.