The Minister of Commerce and Industry, Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution and Textiles, Shri Piyush Goyal has called for increasing India's share in global trade to 10% and taking our share of exports in GDP to about 25%.

“These are ambitious targets, but I think doable,” said Shri Goyal, addressing the Closing session of the Post-Budget Webinar on ‘Make in India for the World’.

Shri Goyal said the Prime Minister, in his Inaugural Address to the webinar, renewed emphasis to promote Manufacturing and make India self-sufficient.

“Today other countries are also talking of programmes very similar to AatmaNirbhar Bharat. And I think there can be no better endorsement of the importance and the success of this vision than the fact that the world today wants to emulate the India story,” he said.

Shri Goyal called for taking India among the top 3 nations in Global Services Trade. He called for supporting MSMEs in foreign trade, besides creating Top 10 R&D labs/innovation centres to position ourselves as a leader in technology during the next 25 years as India embarks upon the Amrit Kaal towards India@100.

“Let all of us become job creators, let all of us work towards strengthening India’s Manufacturing ecosystem in a collaborative approach, let’s all of us make India AatmaNirbhar,” he said.

Stating that the Government is looking at a more liberal regulatory regime for the Drones sector barring the Defence systems, Shri Goyal said the Industry should aim to make India become the manufacturing hub of Drones. He called for integrating Quality in full value chain and said it should not just come into picture once the final product is made.

Underlining the need to develop technical skills of tomorrow for the industry, Shri Goyal called for the need to reorient academic courses to make it relevant to the “needs of today”.

“Very often, demand of time is moving very fast, change in curriculum moves much slowly, Of course, there are lot of problems, you cannot change curriculum overnight, but I think more relevant, contemporary education is equally important,... so more academic courses relevant to what you require, and for that we will need to do some research for what is being taught today and how contemporary that is,” he said.

Earlier in the day, the Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi delivered the Special Address to the webinar organised by the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT), Ministry of Commerce and Industry. Following the opening session, three consecutive sessions were held covering (i) Paradigm shift in manufacturing in India @ 100, (ii) Charting out the strategy for Realizing India’s Trillion Dollar Goal in Exports and (iii) Exploring how the MSMEs will act as the Growth Engine for Indian Economy. The closing session witnessed the Presentation of Action Plans by three senior Industry leaders, i.e, the Session Moderators, on the outcomes and the way forward. Senior officials of the Central and State Governments also participated in the deliberations.

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DJN/AM/PK/MS