The Indian commerce and industry ministry has observed that the textile and footwear manufacturing sectors and their exports are concentrated in a few states. Therefore, the ministry intends to formalise an industrial policy that will include special provisions for the textile and footwear sectors. This would help these two sectors to expand across India.
Of the exports from India, those from Maharashtra, Gujarat, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Telangan account for 70 per cent. The ministry wants to prevent exports rooting down to these states alone and wants other states too to join the exporters’ band.
According to a senior official of the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP), the new industrial policy will include technical aspects of Industry 4.0. It will also include the national manufacturing policy launched in 2011 and put forth the Digital India Initiative.
The ministry floated the initial discussion draft on the new industrial policy in August 2017. However, the ministry is yet to release the final draft into the public domain, in spite of the government announcing that the final draft would be made public in January this year.
The initial draft focused on many important aspects such as jobs creation, promotion of foreign technology transfer, growth of micro, small & medium enterprises and a goal of attracting $100 billion foreign direct investment annually.
The new policy may note the slowdown of low-skilled jobs in China, which the Economic Surveys pointed out in the last three years, and implement mandatory domestic procurement norms.
The industrial policy being followed right now, was framed in 1991, when the P V Narasimha Rao-led government was in power and Dr. Manmohan Singh was the finance minister.
