By TIOL News Service

NEW DELHI, DEC 22, 2012: THE Union Minister of Commerce Industry and Textiles, Mr Anand Sharma, chaired the 5th meeting of the Government-Industry Joint Task Force here yesterday to take stock of the developments on the economic front of the last few months and ascertaining views of the Industry leaders on the recent policy initiatives taken by the Government.

Expressing concern over the trade performance as exports from April-November 2012 stood at USD 189.2 billion showing a decline of (-) 5.9%, Mr Sharma assured the Industry that measure to support exporters will be announced as early as Monday.

On National Manufacturing Policy, He said he intends to hold the 1st meeting of the Manufacturing Industry Promotion Board in the near future to review the state of this very critical sector as well as the progress in the implementation of the National Manufacturing Policy. The Green Manufacturing Committee under the chairmanship of Secretary, DIPP has held its 1st meeting and set out the roadmap for implementation of the relevant components of the policy. The Ministry of Environment & Forests has completed the action required at central government level and issued the necessary advisory to the state governments. A similar advisory with respect to labour issues is to be brought out in the near future. This should go a long way in enhancing the ease of doing business especially in the National Investment and Manufacturing Zones. Ten NIMZs have been notified i.e. 8 along the Delhi Mumbai Industrial Corridor and 2 outside of it i.e. Tumkur in Karnataka and Nagpur in Maharashtra. A slowdown in manufacturing has huge implications in terms of employment and social cohesion said Shri Sharma. As the nature of manufacturing changes to more capital intensive manufacturing, the rate of growth to sustain employment would have to be atleast 12%-15%, the Minister pointed out.

The Minister informed about the measures for making SEZ Policy more attractive said that the department is in the process of finalisation of the revised SEZ Policy in consultation with the Ministry of Finance and hoped that before the next Budget, the Ministry will be able to announce the changes. In the meanwhile, the Ministry of Environment has simplified the procedure for environmental clearances of SEZs on the same lines as that for National Investment and Manufacturing Zones (NIMZs) under NMP and individual SEZ units have been exempted from public hearing where SEZ as a whole has undergone public hearing. The Central/State Governments have been authorised to delegate powers to an official of the State Pollution Control Board for giving necessary regularly clearances pertaining to environment.

The Minister pointed out that the Government has taken some concrete measures for reviving the investment sentiments, both domestic and foreign, through a series of measures and Cabinet decisions. “On the foreign investment front, we have taken concrete measures and opened up FDI policy in Multi-brand retail upto 51% while stipulating that atleast half of the investment will go for creating backend infrastructure.

FDI policy has also been liberalised in the Single brand retail in which 100% foreign investment is now allowed. Foreign airline carriers are now allowed to make investment upto 49% in the aviation sector and we have aligned the broadcasting sector, bringing the caps to 74% aligning them with the prevailing caps in the telecom sector. We have also allowed FDI upto 49% in the power exchanges which will create new business activity in this emerging sector”, said Mr Sharma.

On regulatory bottlenecks, especially in which projects pertaining to mining and infrastructure sector, the Minister informed that the Government has established a Cabinet Committee on Infrastructure chaired by the Prime Minister which will particularly steer projects of over Rs. 1000 crores and iron out the regulatory hurdles and ensure that the timelines stipulated are met.

The Minister urged both CII and FICCI to divide among themselves 10 States which contribute to the bulk of the industrial output, manufacturing where they could hold structured meetings with the State Governments on the specific issues.