India’s merchandise exports jump by 17.25% in Oct
The trade deficit was widened to USD 27.14 billion. Imports increased by 3.9% to USD 66.34 billion in October compared to USD 63.86 billion in the year-ago period.
Union Minister for Power and New & Renewable Energy R K Singh on Thursday exhorted the Indian manufacturing industry to embrace the challenge of being able to compete globally by making in India not only for the country but for the world.
Addressing a Media Summit here, he said the Indian industry needs to look around to compete in external markets and be able to export. “There is no country which can be fully self-sufficient; every country needs to import something, for which you need to be able to sell to that country, which in turn needs quality, finishing, and product improvement. This is what the industry did not do in the era of licensing,” he said.
The minister told the industry representatives that they should ensure that the quality of their products is so good that they are able to compete globally and that their prices are reasonable. “Ultimately, you have to compete, and the people are not going to suffer while you give them outdated or bad-quality equipment or high prices,” he added.
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Mr Singh said India is also open to people coming and setting up industry in the country. “We want the manufacturing to come here. The world is looking at China plus one, we want to be that one,” he added.
Reflecting on challenges faced historically by the manufacturing sector, the minister said that there has never been a dearth of demand, but that the pace of growth brought in by the government has multiplied the demand manifold.
Speaking about the power sector, he said the government has invested about Rs 20 lakh crore in the power sector during the last nine years, and that another Rs. 17 lakh crore will be invested in the next 5-7 years.
“In the last ten years, we have added 190 GW of power generation capacity, increasing it to around 436 GW, nearly doubling it. This required a lot of thermal and renewable equipment. We added 200,000 circuit kilometres to transmission lines; our transmission system today is the largest integrated transmission system in the world,” he added.
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