Giving Muscle to Manufacturing

The National Manufacturing Strategy Paper, brought out by the NMCC deals for the most part with "generic" issues which have been on the agenda for some time. Such issues-like infrastructure, interest rates, transaction costs, legal and procedural simplifications, funding of research and development, indirect tax reform, and small industry sector facilitation-are nonetheless worthy of emphasis because of their primary importance to manufacturing, whose share in the gross domestic product, and thus in employment creation, has been static for over a decade. These issues by their very nature require sustained action over a long period. However, there are some major issues on which clarity and action are required in the shortest possible period. These include a perspective as to whether a distinction needs to be made-and if so, to what extent-between expansion of the domestic market and winning shares in global markets, and between the needs of manufacturing involving domestic capital and that involving foreign capital.