The governments have to show their role, intention and administrative skill in ensuring a level playing field for entrepreneurship, said PTR Palanivel Thiaga Rajan, Minister for Finance and Human Resources Management, Tamil Nadu.

“The Government has the definite role in developing basic hard infrastructure that facilitate and accelerate economic growth including overseeing the development of soft infrastructure to improve quality of life. This is still a job simple to describe but hard to do, and the administrative skill lies in doing it,” he said while speaking at the valedictory meet of TiEcon Kerala 2021.

“In so far as entrepreneurship is concerned, we should bear in mind that the role of the Government is limited to building the right ecosystem for excellence and encouraging professionalism, ensuring ease of doing business - reduce complexity and unnecessary regulations, without compromising standards and environmental benchmarks, and then get out of the way. We also have to provide a safety net -some compassionate hand for those entrepreneurs who go through difficulties. The Government has also a role to play as the first buyer of all brilliant technologies that the government needs which will naturally encourage entrepreneurship and innovative ideas,” he said.

“It is also imperative that new avenues and projects that generate revenue need to be identified in rural and urban areas. The human resources idling in many redundant government departments can be effectively shifted to activate, co-ordinate, guide and develop these identified sectors which generate employment and income. It is high time we carried out expenditure switching especially with respect to the less-utilized or unutilised manpower in many departments,” he added.

Pramod Narayan, MLA from Ranni said that the concepts of entrepreneurship should be instilled in children right from school level to ensure that the new generation would be natural risk takers or facilitators of farming and sustainable industry. Farmers and Agripreneurs form a single ecosystem. Friendly ecosystem will evolve when young entrepreneurs educate and aid farmers in getting best crop yields, best price and market them.

Ajit Moopan, President, TiE Kerala said that people need to develop an overall friendly mindset towards entrepreneurs and job providers. Local Self-Government heads can compete with each other to bring the best projects to their area.

Elias George, Partner and Head, Infrastructure, Government and Health Care, KPMG India said that both national as well as global investors are increasingly on the lookout for safe harbours for their investment – locales with political and social stability, good quality of living, robust physical and internet connectivity, an attractive setting and availability of inputs like water and energy.

“Kerala scores very well on all these fronts. Investors also look for welcoming local communities. We need to address the concerns in this area,” he said.