NEW DELHI: The NITI Aayog in the next one year will work with coastal states in the country to bring them closer to the Chinese provinces on coastlines to replicate their manufacturing success
stories.
With wages going high in the Chinese coastal manufacturing zones, the fourth India-China strategic economic dialogue held in the national capital decided to collaborate with Indian states to develop manufacturing bases with relevant reforms in land and labour laws.
“China has shown a lot of appetite to help with technology and infrastructure development in the Indian coastal states to take advantage of the lower wages in a bid to stay price-competitive in the world market. Coastal Indian states have come forward to take advantage of the opportunities. Even Telangana has come forward saying that the state is not far from coastline and would like to take part in the opportunity,” said the NITI Aayog vice-chairman Arvind Panagaria, who led the Indian side during the bilateral dialogue.
“Representatives of Gujrat, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Telangana and CEO of the Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Clusters (DMIC) gave presentations to the working group of the two countries. The state governments gave presentations on opportunities in the coastal regions of India,” said a senior official of the NITI Aayog.
The Aayog is pushing setting up of coastal manufacturing bases spread over in the radius of 250 kms and more. “These states can carry out certain reforms in land acquisition and labour laws to attract investment, which may otherwise be difficult to do for the whole of the state. The proposal has been received well on the Chinese sides, as manufactured products in such clusters could be shipped in quick time for exports,” added Panagaria. Incidentally, the Aayog is of the view that there would be a need for legislation to give a robust support to the coastal manufacturing zones.
The two sides have identified areas like infrastructure, automobile, energy, electronics for the coastal manufacturing zones.
With the Ministries of Railways and Shipping working closely to provide the last mile connectivity to the coastal manufacturing facilities, the Aayog believes that the proactive response by the state governments can give a major leg up to the ambition of raising the share of manufacturing in India’s GDP.
The Aayog will work with the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) of China in taking forward the discussions on coastal manufacturing zones.