Working to make India global manufacturing hub: PM tells ASEAN leaders

The Dollar Business Bureau

The Prime Minister, Narendra Modi at the ASEAN Business and Investment Summit 2015, at Kuala Lumpur, in Malaysia on Saturday

  Promising more policy reforms to ease the business process, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday told investors of ASEAN countries that his government was making all out efforts to transform India into a global manufacturing hub. “Reducing complicated procedures, making them available at one platform- preferably online, simplifying the forms and formats has been taken up on war footing. We are working in all ways to make India a global manufacturing hub,” Modi said at the ASEAN Business and Investment Summit in Kuala Lumpur. The Prime Minister is in Malaysia to attend the 13^th ASEAN-India summit.  India’s trade with the grouping of 10 countries has been growing continuously. The summit presents its members an opportunity to further economic corporation and investment opportunities in Asia’s third largest economy. During his meeting with ASEAN business leaders, Modi highlighted a number of policy reforms undertaken by his government in the past one and a half year. Modi said that his ‘Make in India’ initiative and other measures have improved the country’s GDP and attracted more investments from overseas. “That is how we have jumped up by 12 ranks in the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business Report of 2016. Industry is realising the benefits of these changes. Index of Industrial Production in the current year shows a distinct improvement over the previous year,” he said. Committing a transparent and predictable tax regime, the Prime Minister said, “We are moving fast to make sure that our tax regime is transparent and predictable. We are also keen to see that genuine investors and honest tax payers get quick and fair decisions on tax matters.” Modi also said that a National Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) policy is expected to be launched by the end of this year. “I want to assure you that India is committed to protect Intellectual Property Rights of all innovators. We have taken several initiatives for transparency and online processing in IP administration,” he said.  

 November 21, 2015  2:35pm IST