Action Agenda for the Manufacturing Sector

Manufacturing is the engine for India’s economic growth and plays a pivotal role in the country’s sustainable and equitable growth. It has the potential to generate employment for a skilled, semiskilled as well as a non-skilled workforce and capitalize on the demographic dividend that the country enjoys.

While the sector has played a fundamental role in opening up the Indian economy to foreign investment and investors, created opportunities for domestic manufacturers to grow and compete in foreign markets and placed India among attractive destinations for investments, Indian manufacturing has a long way to go before it achieves the National Manufacturing Policy (NMP) set target of contributing 25 per cent to the GDP, and realizes it’s true potential.

Given the strong potential and the far reaching impact of manufacturing in employment generation, investments and infrastructure development, both the Government and the industry acknowledge

its strategic importance and see a central role for manufacturing-led industrial development of the economy. However, the current economic environment presents various challenges. Macro

economic issues such as moderation in GDP growth, rising inflation, high interest rates and the widening current account deficit, coupled with micro-economic issues such as a complex business regulatory framework, sluggish implementation process of industrial reforms, high compliance costs, inadequate infrastructure, rigid labour norms, time consuming clearances and approval processes, land acquisition issues, rising instances of industrial disputes and non-availability of requisite workforce have impacted the entire industry. This environment has not only hampered manufacturing growth, but also the overall growth of the Indian economy.

Therefore, the need of the hour is a robust decision making and policy implementation system to revive and re-ignite growth in manufacturing. The Government has already initiated the process of implementing the NMP and notified 12 National Investments and Manufacturing Zones (NIMZs) across the country. These zones will help overcome various challenges and issues faced by

manufacturing today and facilitate high manufacturing growth, but urgent need would be to expedite setting up these notified NIMZs. Complementing these measures is the 12th Five Year Plan focus on

promoting manufacturing by developing capabilities across sectors, especially through technology, innovation and R&D in core sectors, and the setting up of the Cabinet Committee on Investment (CCI) to fast track clearance for large projects.

However, bringing convergence on important policies such as the Land Acquisition and Rehabilitation Bill, the MMDR Act, and the implementation of GST as well as the alignment of national and state manufacturing priorities will be essential for manufacturing to achieve its true potential.

CII has submitted a list of large scale manufacturing projects to the Government for consideration by the CCI with a recommendation that projects below Rs 1000 crore be reviewed as well to spur the investment cycle in the country.

CII is also working with the Government in easing business regulations in the country and is constituting a ‘Task Force on Ease of Doing Business’ that would make recommendations to simplify doing business in India. CII will work closely with the Government and various stakeholders to make manufacturing in India more attractive.

Undoubtedly, a strong manufacturing sector and its healthy growth is crucial for ensuring high GDP growth, creating additional employment opportunities, reducing inequalities and increasing investments and global competitiveness. CII hopes continuous time-bound efforts and ongoing reforms will help put manufacturing back on a high growth trajectory.

Achieve CyberSecurity Together

Calling Out to all those interested in cyber security and wish to convey their thoughts

CII is organising a conference on  ‘ACT – Achieve CyberSecurity Together’ on 13 July 2013 at Hotel Hilton, Chennai, and coinciding with this, we are reaching out to those who might be interested to contribute articles on Cyber Security

All articles will be compiled and circulated to all the delegates, senior officials and participants from the Cyber Security sector.

Your article should imbibe any one of the below listed topics:

• Establishing Reliable Security in Cloud Networks
• Establishing an effective national cyber security infrastructure – especially what the Govt intends to Private sector participation
• Cyber and Network security for Banking
• Cyber and Network security for MSMEs
• New trends in Cyber Forensics
• Future trends in Data Management
• Containing the Deadliest attacks

Submission: We would like you to maintain the limit of 500 – 600 words and send a brief profile of the author with photograph. The paper needs to be forwarded to the undersigned on or before 30st June 2013 by email.

The conference will analyse the identified Problem: “Internet” = a hostile network like the wild-west WITHOUT a sheriff! 

The objective of the “Achieve CyberSecurity Together (ACT)” – with a theme “Face Cyber Threats & Challenges” is to discuss greatest emerging cyber treats across the nation. The challenges, technological gaps and necessary research directions related to cyber security, as well as the best suited instruments to implement the tasks.

Please contact us directly if you have any questions on 044 – 42444555  / dhwani.shukla@cii.in

Please note: plagiarism & a paper without proper references & sources will not be accepted.

Empowering Inmates With Skill-Sets

Centre of Excellence in fabrication at Trichy Central Prison planned

Plans are, to establish production unit after training 50 prisoners

CII has launched income-generation activities in the Trichy Central Prison and the Women’s Sub-Jail earlier this week. A request was made to industries by the Inspector General of Prisons, Tamil Nadu, for playing an important role in prison reforms through empowering inmates with skill-sets to lead respectable lives after their release.

Earlier this year the Inspector General of Prisons expressed the department’s keenness to join hands with the industries to transform the lives of inmates by making their latent talents surface.

At the women’s sub-jail, the inmates would be trained in gem-cutting by an expert from the gem and jewellery association. CII is aiming to revive the gem cutting industry for which Trichy was once famous for and a few machines have been installed in the sub-jail. The inmates would be entitled to stipend for attending the training. After training 50 inmates CII would establish a production unit. Subsequently, the inmates would be trained in the making of sanitary napkins, minor millets and pickles. The products they make would be patronised by educational institutions.

Likewise, at the Tiruchi Central Prison, the idea of CII was to establish a Centre of Excellence in fabrication with support from BHEL Small Industries Association. After training interested inmates in welding, fitting and grinding, CII would explore scope for outsourcing jobs for the inmates. After their release, CII would prevail upon fabrication industries that are pre-dominant in Trichy to absorb them as regular employees. Faculties from the MAM Group of Institutions carried out the feasibility study for starting income generation activities for jail inmates.

Nawas Meeran, CII Southern Region Deputy Chairman, visited the Central Prison and the sub-jail along with the Trichy Zone Chairperson, Rani Muralidharan, for launching the training programmes in fabrication and gem-cutting in the men’s and women’s prisons respectively, as a Corporate Social Responsibility initiative. They were accompanied by the DIG of Prisons R. Duraisamy, Superintendent of Prisons D. Palani and Women’s sub-jail In-Charge Parmila.

IT for India – New Horizons, New Opportunities

CII has been making sustained efforts to create a conducive business environment to propel higher growth rate for India Inc. and will continue to play a meaningful role in this direction. CII believes that the adoption of Information Technology is a key transformational tool that will help India “leap–frog” to achieve competitive advantage for its growth. 

India is at the forefront of the large IT –ITES market and is well established as a ‘destination of choice’. Having grown manifold in size and matured in terms of service delivery capability and footprint over the past decade, the Indian IT industry is now at an inflexion point—and faces a unique opportunity to enhance its role as a full–service, value–adding partner to the domestic industry as well. There is significant headroom in the addressable IT adoption opportunity for India Inc., and there are sizeable untapped opportunities across a wide spectrum of verticals. Also, the Indian IT industry is favourably positioned to benefit from its established delivery capabilities, which bear a key influence on user industries’ decision to adopt IT .

Over the next three years, the right choices by stakeholders of the Indian IT industry could effect a three–fold growth. The aspired target is aggressive, but is surely achievable, and will bring huge payoffs to India’s economy, employment and role in the global marketplace.

For the last few years, businesses have been trying to harness the power of information technology to transform the way they work. In CII’s interactions with CEOs across industry verticals, four common themes resonate:

• Increasing growth
• Building a competitive advantage
• Enhancing user productivitya
• Reducing costs of operations

As the four interconnected technology megatrends—Mobility, Social, Big Data and Cloud, dominate the next decade, the IT industry has a compelling opportunity to bring a paradigm shift in the way technology gets adopted by businesses across verticals at lower costs and at scale.

The CII-BCG report on IT enablement of Indian business, titled “IT for India – New Horizons, New Opportunities”, discusses the trends in IT enablement of Indian businesses and lays down the opportunities, challenges and the role of different stakeholders. An 8 point action plan is also outlined to ensure the active collaboration of the key stakeholders.

Click to download the report