Government to fine-tune FTAs
India needs to extract more benefits from the Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) for the non-ferrous metal industry to gain in export markets.
“As an industry and the economy as a whole, we should also try to extract more benefits from such FTAs,” said Bipin Menon, Additional DGFT, Ministry of Commerce & Industry.
Menon informed that the government will take a holistic approach to fine-tune the FTAs in order to align them to Atmanirbhar Bharat (self-sufficient) program.
He urged all stakeholders of the industry to re-strategize and be innovative in products and markets.
He also called for the adoption of newer technologies which will help the growth of the non-ferrous metals sector, as the existing supply chain gets unshackled in the post COVID scenario.
India also needs a well-developed industry to supply non-ferrous metals as raw material to end-product manufacturers, according to Dr. V K Saraswat, Member, NITI Aayog.
“With the increasing usage of these metals in several existing as well as emerging applications coupled with new technologies, we can expect a paradigm shift that can change the way non-ferrous metals will be produced and consumed in the future,” he said on 22 Oct 2020 at an industry webinar.
“The Government’s role is to provide policy initiatives and ease of doing business, but industry must come forward with investments in high-value products for producing not only for the domestic markets but also for exports,” he pointed out.
Elaborating on the challenges faced by the industry, Dr. Saraswat said that the government is working on issues like inverted duty structure, dumping of goods under various FTAs, poor infrastructure, high logistics and power costs as well as other taxes.
As the demand in end-use sectors picks up in the future, post unlocking from the COVID-19 pandemic, the non-ferrous metals industry will undergo a complete paradigm shift, Dr. Saraswat told the on ‘Indian Non-Ferrous Metals Industry,’ organized by FICCI.
“Strong domestic demand along with government reforms will maintain the economic growth momentum going forward. A major push is expected to emerge with the help of various reforms by the government which will help the industries like non-ferrous metals,” he said.
In order to further boost the sector, Dr. Saraswat emphasized on early implementation of the recycling policy.
“The much-needed reforms on guidelines or standards for boosting domestic scrap recycling would be addressed by the Metal Recycling Policy, which the government has formulated along with the industry stakeholders,” he said.
Dr. Saraswat further stated that the industry must also invest more in R&D in order to become globally competitive.
He further stated that “leveraging the initiatives like Atmanirbhar Bharat, Make in India and Smart Cities, we can expect opportunities in the manufacturing sector including the non-ferrous metals”. #exports #manufacturing #banking #investment #trade #FTAs #makeinIndia /fiinews.com
