The Government is examining ways to resolve Nokia’s plant sale issue, including concerns related to workers who have lost their jobs.

“We are looking at all the constructive steps that can be taken to help the situation. We want workers to get justice,” Commerce and Industry Minister Nirmala Sitharaman told reporters on Monday at a press conference to announce India’s participation in the Hannover Messe fair in Germany next month.

The Minister was responding to a question on whether the Government was looking at reviving the plant.

On November 1 last year, the company suspended mobile handset production at the Sriperumbudur plant which directly employed 8,000 workers. The company had been wrestling with taxation issues and other legal wrangles.

Stating that the closure also gave a message about the need to improve the taxation policy and duty structure in the country, the Minister said the government would try to ensure that a “Nokia-like” situation does not arise again.

“It is more a question of how the Indian taxation policy and the duty structure have all adversely affected setting up of industry. We have already started resolving the inverted duty problem,” she added.

With Prime Minister Narendra Modi commenting on Nokia in the Rajya Sabha recently and stressing on the need to address the problems of those employed in the unit, Sitharaman said that she was sure something would happen.

When asked about the long-pending Foreign Trade Policy (FTP), the Minister said that it was long over-due and would be announced soon. Explaining the delay, Sitharaman said that the new five-year FTP requires comprehensive deliberations on various sectors and exporting destinations. She dismissed observations that the fall in exports in the last three months was due to a delay in the policy.

“I differ from this view. Even when the FTP was explicit and was there in place between 2009 and 2014 exports suffered,” she said.

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