/ciol/media/agency_attachments/c0E28gS06GM3VmrXNw5G.png)
Follow UsHYDERABAD, INDIA: The Centre plans to set up manufacturing and investment industrial zones along India's eastern and southern corridors, commerce and industry minister Anand Sharma said on Thursday.
Addressing the CII Partnership Summit 2011 being held here, he said the government had announced seven national manufacturing and investment zones along the Delhi-Mumbai industrial corridor.
He said it would be the largest infrastructure project in the world. “It will embrace 43 per cent population of India. We are now looking at the eastern and southern corridors.”
He said Andhra Pradesh would have one of the mega industrial zones with integrated townships that will be hubs of manufacturing and innovation.
He pointed out that after India's independence, only two townships were developed: the industrial city of Jamshedpur and the residential city of Chandigarh.
Sharma said countries need to look at new ways of production and sustainable growth, considering the challenges of climate change.
He pointed out that India had come out with the national manufacturing policy 'which would be a game changer and transformative for India in decades to follow'.
The policy is aimed at raising the share of manufacturing in GDP from 16 per cent to 26 per cent in a decade and create 100 million jobs.
Voicing concern over lack of progress in the Doha round of WTO talks, Sharma cautioned against protectionism, saying it would only deepen recession.
He called for removing the existing barriers and for more engagement to ensure free flow of goods and services. Addressing the Partnership Summit 2012 here, he said multilateralism was the only way forward.
“A multilateral agreement will be important to address past distortions and imbalances which are weighing heavily against the developed countries,” he said.
The minister noted that at a time when the global economy was under stress, the world was witnessing protectionist trends. “History has taught us that protectionism is counter-productive. It can deepen recession.”