Corporates sign up for ‘Make in India’ campaign

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has reached out to corporate honchos to promote his ‘Make in India’ campaign. Mukesh Ambani, Cyrus Mistry and Maruti Suzuki’s Kenichi Ayukawa are among the 500 who have so far confirmed their attendance at the launch of the campaign on September 25.

The ‘Make in India’ campaign is a drive to promote the country as an investor-friendly destination and increase manufacturing growth to 10 per cent annually.

Other corporate heads who have confirmed their presence include: CK Birla (CK Birla Group), Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw (Biocon), Nikhil Nanda (Escorts), KM Mammen (MRF), CS Verma (SAIL), Shashi Ruia (Essar), Harshpati Singhania (JK Paper), Ajay Shriram (DCM Shriram) and Sanjay Lalbhai (from Arvind and Lalbhai Group).

“We expect many more to do so in the next two days,” a Government official told BusinessLine .

More than 1,200 invitations for the inaugural ceremony have been sent by the Government to CEOs from India and abroad, heads of various Embassies and Missions and Principal Secretaries and other senior officials from all States, the official said.

While the previous UPA Government, too, had stressed on the need to boost manufacturing and set a target of increasing its share in GDP to 25 per cent from 16 per cent in a decade, Modi plans to do it in a well-structured way.

The DIPP (Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion) has identified 3,000 companies from 30 countries spread across 10 sectors which it would target for greater investments through sustained dialogue as part of the campaign.

The Government has also decided to be more responsive and friendly as far as its interface with potential investors is considered and plans to address all queries and concerns systematically through a three-layer process.

Simple queries will be answered through the automatic answering process already in place. The more complex ones will be handled by a team of eight experts put in place by the DIPP, which includes economists and legal experts.

Questions that require fine interpretation of policy will be tackled by nodal officials of the ministries and departments concerned, and the more elaborate ones will be handled by the DIPP Secretary.

The campaign will also focus on de-licensing and deregulating both at the Central and State levels. “The DIPP is holding talks with States on how they can smoothen things at their end,” the official pointed out.

There will be a “vigorous” digital campaign undertaken by the DIPP to advertise the efforts to attract more investments.

However, officials admit, that achieving a growth rate over 10 per cent for manufacturing is an ambitious target, especially with the sector not doing well at present. “The target is ambitious but we do not have an alternative. Manufacturing has to grow fast for our economy to do well,” the official said.

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