The Hindu Business Line : Expert group for advanced technology items planned

The competitiveness of the Indian economy has progressively improved in the past three years. During the last one year, the country's global competitiveness has moved ahead of comparable economies such as China, Brazil and Russia.

This was stated by the Chairman of the National Manufacturing Competitive Council (NMCC), Dr V Krishnamurthy, chairing the first meeting of the Empowered Sub-Committee of the High Level Committee for Manufacturing (HLCM) here on Saturday. "Among the BRIC countries, India is the only country that has improved its ranking compared to China, Russia and Brazil. India also has the highest ranking among these four countries and stands 43rd, followed by China at 54, Russia at 62 and Brazil at 66," Dr Krishnamurthy said. The manufacturing sector had shown a robust growth of 11.8 per cent during the first five months of the current financial year, he said.

Focus areas

The meeting decided that an expert group would be constituted to evolve strategies and recommend policy measures required to provide the necessary thrust to the manufacture of advanced technology products such as electronics, opto-electronics, information and communication, flexible manufacturing, advance materials, biotechnology, aerospace, etc, according to an official release.

The committee also noted that though India enjoys many advantages in terms of skilled manpower and development of IT/ITES sectors, the potential is not being realised by way of developing

and manufacturing high-value advanced technology products.

The meeting also stressed the need to begin the proposed 10-point strategy for enhancing the competitiveness of small and medium enterprises, called the National Manufacturing Competitiveness Programme (NMCP), as quickly as possible and urged the concerned Ministries to ensure that necessary approvals be given at the earliest. It also discussed the draft action plan prepared by the Ministry of Food Processing Industry for energising the food processing sector.