Supplementing Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s efforts to woo foreign investors during his numerous foreign tours, the Government plans to launch a systematic promotional campaign to hard-sell India to about 500 companies across the globe.
These companies will be spread across the 25 sectors identified in the Prime Minister’s much publicised ‘Make in India’ campaign launched earlier this year, an official in the Department of Industrial Policy & Promotion (DIPP).
These include automobiles and components, aviation, bio-tech, construction, Defence production, electrical machinery, electronics, IT, media and entertainment, food processing, mining, oil and gas, ports, pharmaceutical, railways and thermal power.
“We will be mainly identifying countries across 10 top markets for the country, which may be in Europe, East Asia, North America and even the CIS,” the official said.
The idea is to select 50 top companies each in those ten markets from the 25 sectors.
“We will then get a promotional team to go to each of those 500 companies with a presentation on sectors that would be of interest to them,” the official added.
With the Government striving to increase the share of the manufacturing sector from the current 16 per cent of GDP to 25 per cent, the Make in India campaign signifies an effort to attract foreign investments to spur growth in the country’s manufacturing sector. India attracted FDI worth just $28 billion in 2013, which is higher than the previous year but much lower than the $46.8 billion of FDI inflows in 2011-12. The DIPP, which has put in place a facilitation cell to work on the Make in India campaign, has started hiring professionals to carry out the promotional campaign.
“We have already hired some professionals, who are helping us shortlist companies and markets. We are going to need many more,” he said.
Domestic firms tooThe DIPP will also identify 50 domestic companies that have leadership in innovation and new technology in the identified sectors and help them to be part of the global value chain. “We will help to strengthen these and see how we can do some match-making with foreign companies,” the official added
The recent steps taken by the BJP-led Government to further open up sectors such as Defence, railways and construction development will further help in the efforts to bring in foreign investments, the official said. The campaign is focussing on delicensing and deregulating, both at the Central and State levels. “The DIPP is holding talks with States on how they can smoothen things at their end,” another official said.