New zones to boost manufacturing, investment on anvil: Anand Sharma

The government will set up National Manufacturing and Investment Zones (NMIZ) across the country that would offer the investor good physical infrastructure, a progressive exit policy, structures to support clean and green technologies, appropriate investment incentives and business friendly approval mechanisms, commerce and industry minister Anand Sharma said today.

"With the objective of helping Indian manufacturing to achieve its true potential and in the process be an engine for job creation, we have proposed the creation of a number of National Manufacturing and Investment Zones (NMIZ)," Sharma told an interactive session of northern region industries in Chandigarh today.

Each zone, he said, would have a combination of production units, public utilities, logistics, environment protection mechanisms, residential areas and administered services.

Sharma said that while the share of services in the country's gross domestic product has grown at a rapid pace, the share of the manufacturing sector in has stagnated at around 15 per cent.

"We have witnessed rapid economic development post liberalisation. However, given the size of our country and the daunting task of providing a basic minimum standard of living for all, we need to achieve much faster growth. We are a young country and we need to cater to the youthful aspirations," he said during the interaction.

"According to the 2007-08 Economic Survey, 64.8 per cent of India's population would be in the working age of 15-64 years in 2026. By 2015, India will have 800 million people in the productive age group of 15 to 59, ahead of China, which is expected to have only 600 million. This means that we need to create employment and enterprise opportunities at that scale. For this to happen, jobs will have to be created both in the services and the manufacturing sector," the minister said.