Panel to boost manufacturing in India

The Steering Committee for Advancing Local Value-Add and Exports (SCALE), a government backed panel, has produced a road map to double India’s manufacturing exports in next five years, reduce the imports by 2/3^rd in the selected sectors and boost domestic consumption to 9% from roughly 7% during a normal year under the Atmanirbhar Bharat Policy.

The panel, headed by former Mahindra & Mahindra MD Pawan Goenka, has said that targeting these three critical factors would result in incremental domestic value addition of US $350-380 billion over the span of next five years. Manufacturing exports in India amount to US$ 229 billion in 2019, having 43% share in total exports including both merchandise and services.

However, according to the panel, on comparison, Vietnam’s 80% of exports are manufacturing products, for Malaysia this share is 70% and for Thailand it is 56%. The SCALE committee is set up under the commerce and industry ministry. The panel has come up with action plans for 24 priority sectors. These sectors include electronics, steel, textiles, auto components, marine products, aluminium, ready-to-eat and processed fruit & vegetable and many more.