FM Nirmala Sitharaman compares India Inc to Hanuman and says industry not aware of own strength

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday questioned India Inc on what was preventing them from investing in manufacturing when foreign investors and counties were showing confidence in the country.

“When countries and industries abroad think this (India) is the place to be, FDIs and FPIs are coming to India. Retail investors believe in India, so what is stopping the Indian Inc?” Sitharaman said while speaking at the Hero Mindmine Summit.

“Is it like Hanuman that you don’t believe in your own capacity and strength,” she said. "This is the time for India, and the government is willing to hear the industry and act on what you give us. We can not miss the bus this time and lose momentum."

The finance minister said the NDA government would make every effort to encourage businesses to invest in India and would offer the necessary programmes. She noted that tax breaks and other policies like production-linked incentives (PLI) have already been implemented to boost India's private sector.

Sitharaman said that because of measures like PLI, many more businesses are considering relocating their manufacturing operations from China and into India.

The government last year rolled out the PLI scheme with an outlay of about Rs 2 lakh crore for as many as 14 sectors, including automobiles and auto components, white goods, textiles, advanced chemistry cells (ACC) and speciality steel.

The strategy behind the scheme was to offer companies incentives for incremental sales from products manufactured in India over the base year. The scheme has been designed to boost domestic manufacturing in sunrise and strategic sectors, curb cheaper imports and reduce import bills, improve the cost competitiveness of domestically-manufactured goods, and enhance domestic capacity and exports.

Sitharaman added that in the next 25 years, India should focus on seeing how it can benefit from the workforce.

“In the case of the PLI scheme, we looked at its impact on our labour force. We are looking for in situ solutions for MSMEs as they are the ones who train and employ locally. So the policy has necessarily underlined the importance of labour,” she said.

Recently news agency PTI reported that there are demands to extend the production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme to more sectors such as certain electronic components, pharma and medical devices, and discussions are underway in the government on these proposals.