CII Summit calls for Health for All

CII for govt, pvt partnership in healthcare

Mr Shripad Yasso Naik, Minister of State (Independent Charge), Department of AYUSH, today announced that the proposed National Health Assurance Mission (NHAM) would reduce out-of-pocket spending on healthcare by the common man.

In his keynote address to the 11^th India Health Summit here today, organized by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), the Minister acknowledged the need for the government to work in sync with the private sector with clear targets in mind so as to achieve the goal of Health for All. “We need to provide accessible, affordable and quality healthcare in rural areas, where most of our population resides,” he urged.

Mr. Shripad Yasso Naik,, Hon’ble Minister of State (Independent Charge) Dept of Ayurveda, Yoga & Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopathy, Government of India

Mr Lov Verma, Secretary-Health, Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, hoped that the NHAM would soon become a reality. Preventive and promotive healthcare is one of the key pillars of the Mission and included many components like Swachh Bharat, yoga, meditation, etc.  Another pillar would be provision of a basket of essential drugs, diagnostics and services.

According to Mr Verma, the NHAM has identified 184 districts (bottom 25 in each State) to ensure targeted interventions. He said that while the per capita expenditure on health has nearly doubled from 2004-05 to 2010-11, it is way below global averages. However, there have been some basic improvements, and India is well on course to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) goals in reducing the maternal mortality rate, infant mortality rate and under-5 mortality rate.

Earlier, in his welcome address, Dr Naresh Trehan, Chairman, CII National Committee on Healthcare & Chairman and Managing Director, Medanta – The Medicity, said that aligning the expertise and resources available with the private sector with the public sector capacity will result in significant enhancement of healthcare delivery in the country without much additional investment.

Setting the context for the two-day summit, Dr Trehan said there was need to identify areas where private sector can complement government efforts in achieving ‘health assurance’ and called for a multi-stakeholder collaborative approach. He also cited the example of the ‘Healthy and education village programme’ done by CII in which Medanta is looking after delivery of medical services. Under this, 100 villages have been adopted. Similarly, he suggested that a few pilot PPP sites be created where government and private providers actively collaborate to develop a framework for quality assurance, payments and reasonable profitability.

Welcoming the commitment of the new government, Mr Harpal Singh, Mentor and Chairman Emeritus, Fortis Healthcare Ltd, said that a Mission like the NHAM was fundamental for development and economic well-being. He suggested that the Mission should focus on the most neglected girl child. He also mentioned that through the consistent efforts of the CII over the last 15 years, health has become a ‘boardroom agenda’ for many Indian companies.

Mr Rahul Khosla, Co-Chairman, CII National Committee on Healthcare & Managing Director, Max India Ltd., said that sustainability was key issue in achieving Health for All. There must be better utilization of what we already have, he said, and there is huge potential to maximize what we have in terms of infrastructure. He looked forward to working hand in hand with government to achieve the goal of health for all.

The two-day CII summit has the theme, Health for All—Call to Action and is attended by government representatives, healthcare professionals, allied healthcare service providers, and media among others.

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 

Gujarat needs to retain talent for growth of IT sector

CII has contemplated a task group in the state of Gujarat for the Service and IT industry and will work on ways to achieve higher growth rate in these sectors.

It’s not that every state can have excellent growth in each and every sector of the economy. Every state has their own strengths.

If you look at the agriculture sector in Gujarat, it has achieved around 10 per cent rate of growth for past ten years. This is fabulous. But to increase the growth rate of state gross domestic product (SGDP), Gujarat could also look at the IT sector.

CII has also discussed the Goods and Services Tax (GST) issue with Modi and It has been a top priority of CII to play an active role in creating the right atmosphere for the implementation of GST.

The drivers for growth would be reforms and governance, inclusive growth and affirmative action, innovation, entrepreneurship and growth of MSMEs and transformation of sectors.

S Gopalakrishnan, President, CII and Co-Founder and Executive Co-Chairman, Infosys, who was in the state for an interactive meet of CII members, also had a meeting with Chief Minister Narendra Modi.