Commerce and Industry Minister Suresh Prabhu said district level ‘ease of doing business’ ranking will soon be launched to ensure that smaller towns and districts become more business-friendly and have broad-based growth.

Back-ground work for ranking districts has already started and a committee has been formed for this purpose, Prabhu said at an interaction at the CII Annual Session 2019 on Thursday.

The Minister also the proposed new industrial policy, that targets an annual Foreign Direct Investment inflow of $100 billion, has been finalised and is likely to be announced by the new government.

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Emphasising the need to attract more FDI that declined in the April-December 2018 period by 7 per cent to $ 33.5 billion, the Minister said India needs to have a strategy to attract overseas investments in both greenfield and brownfield projects. “We should target those companies that can invest because they have surplus and at the same time, we must have a matching sectoral strategy where in inbound investments can be absorbed,” he said.

The Minister said India’s exports of goods and services would touch $540 billion and overall trade deficit was likely to decline by about $10 billion for the first time. The country’s goods exports grew 8.85 per cent to $298.47 billion during the April-February period of the current financial year.

On Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) being negotiated by the country, Prabhu said the government would interact with the industry more on the issue.

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