FICCI told to study global market trends and patterns
More and more global manufacturers are planning to set up plants and R&D facilities in India, hiring its young and talented work force in significant numbers while the country is poised to be the front office of the world and not restrict to being back-office as it is now.
This confidence boosting message was delivered by Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal to industry leaders on 7 Oct 2022.
He underlined, “The burgeoning middle class and greater participation of women in the workplace will create more and more opportunities for our manufacturing and service sectors.”
The world had huge expectations from India and not just for the immediate future but for the long term, expecting the Indian market to drive global growth, provide the talent pool that the world needs and spearhead technology transformations.
He told FICCI members to re-orient themselves and aspire to become a think-tank rather than restricting themselves to being advocates for day-to-day industry issues.
He called on the organization to study global trends and patterns in business and find meaningful and effective means to engage with these developments.
India’s large population is now considered as a boon by the world because of its potential to be the market of the future, the Minister pointed out.
He spoke of India’s fast adoption of technology and added that education had reached millions of homes during the pandemic through the use of over 800 million smart phones.
Goyal highlighted the government’s ceaseless efforts to take good quality 4G to the remotest of areas in India. It was now preparing for the roll out of 5G across the length and breadth of the nation.
He impressed on the industry to partner with the government to ensure that the whole nation has access to the multifarious advantages of 5G.
“India has to embrace innovation,” he stressed.
He told the youth of the nation to nurture the spirit of enquiry and relentlessly tinker with ideas and find solutions for day to day problems of human existence using all possible tools that digital technology has to offer, from Artificial Intelligence to Machine Learning.
Speaking of Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC), Goyal said that just as Unified Payments Interface (UPI) has democratized digital payments, enabling interoperability and bringing down transaction costs, ONDC would also help democratize the e-Commerce sector and bring in more transparency and fairness in the entire ecosystem.
He elaborated that ONDC, a set of open protocols, would safeguard customer’s choice, provide better market access to sellers and help bring the remotest corners of the country into the e-Commerce framework by empowering them with digitization.
Terming ONDC as a public good, Goyal said that it would help save jobs and safeguard and empower small mom and pop stores in the remotest parts of the nation with the possibilities of technology.
Goyal also told the Indian pharma industry to become part of international quality protocols such as Pharmaceutical Inspection Co-operation Scheme (PIC/S).
The Minister urged pharma majors to handhold smaller manufacturers to institute Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) so that India, which is touted to be the pharmacy of the world, is able to maintain the trust of the world. fiinews.com
