The Tamil Nadu government will come out with a Research and Development (R&D) policy shortly. The focus will be on using the State’s human resources effectively, said Industries Secretary S Krishnan. “We are working on it currently and it should be released in the coming months,” he said at the CII Tamil Nadu Conclave 2022 held on Friday.

If Tamil Nadu has to grow and triple the GSDP in the next ten years, growth in the industry and manufacturing has to be consistently in double digit. For this, manufacturing investment is critical. Equally, Tamil Nadu has over 50 per cent enrollment ratio in higher education; high skill-set and aspiration. People want to do higher end jobs in R&D and learning. Jobs in the knowledge economy are critical to a state like Tamil Nadu, he said.

The big advantage of knowledge-based economies is that they are recession proof. They are the economies that continue to grow even in years of stress. The opportunities are really opening up, and many would be participating in the knowledge sectors in the days to come, he said.

Manufacturing and services sector

There has been literature of late, stating that India as a country and states like Tamil Nadu need to be much more focussed on knowledge-based service economy. Already, over 55 per cent of the State’s economy is services, but not all that is in the higher end. “We really need to push that to the higher end of the services. We cannot rely only on services, but on a combination of both services and manufacturing. The manufacturing sector also offers jobs, lower down in the skill and knowledge levels that are equally required. We need jobs in both of these sectors,” he said.

Demographic dividend

Looking to triple the GDP is what the State government is attempting. This target is not just in terms of being a stretched target, but it is a very legitimate ambition, which can be realised. There is every possibility that the State can do it. More than the possibility, it is a compulsion. Among all the states in India, Tamil Nadu and Kerala are at the risk of losing on the so-called demographic dividend earlier than the rest of India. It is really this decade which has to be necessarily Tamil Nadu’s decade - the 2020s. “If we don’t grow now, then the possibilities of growing rapidly later diminish. In a sense, it is now or never a question and which is why it is a call for all hands on deck to achieve the ambitious target,” he said.

The momentum is strong sensed by the number of requests for investment proposals coming up; large investments are coming in; expansions taking place across the board and demand for plots at industrial estates picking up. Many of the investment is from home grown units. There are many hidden gems in Tamil Nadu, he said. The proposals are of over ₹1,000 crore and there are large expansions, he added.

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