To reboot and energise the Indian economy in the post-COVID scenario, IT Minister K.T. Rama Rao suggested several measures, including constitution of an empowered strategy group with representatives from various sectors, to follow up on investment opportunities.
“India has a great opportunity and lets grab it aggressively,” he said pitching for a coordinated strategy to revitalise the economy similar to the combat against the coronavirus. Mr. Rama Rao expressed his views in a series of tweets to Union Minister for Commerce and Industry Piyush Goyal. The strategy group should comprise representatives of Central and State governments, economists, policy makers, bankers and industry leaders.
Mr. Rama Rao said only bold reforms imbibing best practices of ease of doing business (EoDB) can propel India into the top 20 of the world rankings. As a part of this, he argued for revisiting old labour laws and bankruptcy laws and update them apart from providing a guarantee and to honour consistency in the State policies to investors.
Capacity building in infra sector and improving skills is vital, he said while emphasizing the need to focus on creating world-class industrial infrastructure in a mission mode over the next one year, including self-contained industrial parks and corridors, apart from creating world-class ITIs and polytechnics across the country with at least two to four of such institutions in each State.
He also suggested to the Minister to concentrate on priority sectors like Pharma, Aerospace, Textiles, IT and Food Processing and aggressively improve export competitiveness. Certain measures like actively scouting of markets, offering better deals than competing nations, extending soft loans for procuring quality machinery and providing international training to the staff need to be taken up, he said. The MSMEs should be extended soft credit and deferment of dues.
Mr. Rama Rao also argued for promoting mega industrial parks like Hyderabad Pharma City and Kakatiya Mega Textile park as projects of national importance.