Prime Minister of India, Shri Narendra Modi, launched the ‘Make in India’ initiative on September 25, 2014 in New Delhi. The ‘Make in India’ initiative has its origin in the Prime Minister’s Independence Day speech, where he gave a clarion call to ‘Make in India’ and ‘Zero Defect; Zero Effect’ policy. Prime Minister also unveiled the logo of ‘Make in India’ campaign. In addition, a newly created website www.makeinindia.com was launched by the Prime Minister. As part of this initiative, a dedicated cell has been created to answer queries from business entities through this web portal. While an exhaustive set of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) on this portal will help investors find instant answers to their general queries, the back-end support team of the cell would be answering specific queries within 72 hours. A total of 25 sectors have been identified, which will be given a special thrust under this initiative.

2. The launch was webcast live by the High Commission of India in Colombo, at an event organised at the Hotel Taj Samudra. The event was attended by around 150 representatives of business and industry of Sri Lanka, Indian CEOs and members of the media.

3. Briefing the gathering, High Commissioner of India, Shri Y. K. Sinha, stated that the new Government in India had pledged to revive economic growth through, inter-alia, re-visiting the policy framework for investments, both foreign and domestic, to make them more conducive; rationalization and simplification of the tax regime; allowing FDI in sectors wherever needed for job and asset creation; acquisition of niche and specialized technology; and proactive facilitation for making ‘doing business’ in India easy. A host of initiatives had been taken by the Government in the past three months, including the ‘eBiz’ project of the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion which aims at providing a single platform to avail business and investment related services. As a result, there has been a perceptible improvement in economic performance.

4. High Commissioner also briefed those present about the development of industrial corridors in India which would improve industrial and urban infrastructure of the country and promote manufacturing. In this regard, the following industrial clusters have been fast tracked – (a) Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor; (b) Chennai-Bengaluru Industrial Corridor; (c) Vizag-Chennai Industrial Corridor- as the first phase of the East Coast Industrial Corridor; (d) Bengaluru-Mumbai Economic Corridor; (e) Amritsar-Kolkata Industrial Corridor and (f) North East-Mynamar Industrial Corridor. High Commissioner detailed the vast opportunities for investment in multiple sectors that were available, and invited Sri Lankan business to take advantage of the same to expand their presence in India.

5. A short film on the initiatives of the Government to promote business in India was screened as a curtain-raiser to the main event. This was followed by the live webcast of the launch of the ‘Make in India’ campaign by Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi. Prime Minister’s address on the occasion was heard with great interest by those present, particularly his emphasis on enhancing business confidence, skill development, effective governance and development being an article of faith of the Government. The webcast was followed by an interactive session with the audience.

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