The much hyped ‘Make in India’ campaign to attract foreign investors to set up manufacturing facilities in India will not help the domestic equipment manufacturers, rather the domestic manufacturing sector will become extinct and monopoly of multinationals will rule laboratory and analytical equipments segment in the country, opined A. P. K. Reddy, national president of Federation of Small and Medium Enterprises of India (FSME).
According to another industry leader, rather than inviting the foreign companies to exploit our resources and knowledge, the government needs to device a policy to encourage local entrepreneurs and should bring in long term schemes to help the SMEs to develop their capacities and encourage new talent to develop innovative and advanced analytical equipments which can be imported to the other countries. “The government on the one hand says we are trying to bring in black money from foreign banks but it has not succeeded in keeping its promise. Instead of bringing foreign investors, what the government can do is devices some innovative scheme and encourage the Indian players to set up manufacturing plants, then automatically all those who have stashed their money in foreign banks will try to invest the same in India to make it white. So what the policy makers need to do is to bring in some novel policy initiatives with a holistic perspective rather than just earning short term revenues with FDIs,” says Reddy.
At present, though the Indian analytical and laboratory equipment manufacturing industry is growing at 14-15 per cent per annum, with more multinational players entering into the Indian markets the scope of doing business for the SMEs will be lost and they will become dependent on the foreign players and provide outsourcing services or become distributors for their products. “We have ample knowledge base and skilled engineering professionals in the country, what India lacks are sincere efforts by the government to back its domestic industry. While our leaders say something, our bureaucrats and administration does something else. There is no coordination between what the government says and what it does. On one hand, it says it is providing land, water and power at subsidised rates, while on the other hand, the corporations like APIIC and other government bodies are allocating the land and other things at exorbitant rates,” said Reddy when asked about government initiatives for the domestic industry.