PHD Chamber of Commerce and Industry has urged the government to promote and propagate genetically-modified (GM) foods to enable India catapult its agricultural and horticultural economies, stating that eventually with GM food applications, India could be one of the largest exporters of its agricultural produce.
The Chamber also appealed to the government emphasising that the time had come to prepare the ground for the forthcoming industrial revolution in India’s forthcoming industrial policy statement, which is already in the public domain, so that all and relevant emerging issues on the industrial front are addressed at the right time and the country doesn’t miss an opportunity to become one of the leading economies in the world over the next few years.
The aforesaid observations were made by Rajeev Talwar, senior vice-president, PHD Chamber, at a seminar titled industrial Growth: Burning Issues and Way Forward which Ajay Dua, former secretary, ministry of commerce and industry, Government of India, presided over.
Niti Bhasin, associate professor, Department of Commerce, Delhi School of Economics; Bornali Bhandari, fellow, National Council of Applied Economic Research; Sanjay Aggarwal, chairman, industry affairs committee, PHD Chamber, and Ram A Poddar and Vikram Agarwal, its co-chairmen, and S P Sharma, the Chamber’s chief economist, participated in it.
Talwar highlighted that countries that adopted GM food technologies and their applications to improve the productivity and quality of their agri products had become net exporters of food products from food importing nations over the last couple of years, and India needs to look at this with a proactive mindset.
The best way to prepare the ground would be to ensure that the forthcoming industrial policy statement contains everything in terms of policy documentation that can address in advance the issues that the industry has been facing, so that its manufacturing value change is linked with global manufacturing processes in which automation and uses of artificial intelligence are so well assimilated.
In his address, Dua felt that capacity generation in the power sector had hardly gone up this year, as compared to last year, on account of the depressed economic sentiments and the increasing production of non-renewable, therefore the new industrial policy statement should be so comprehensive and intensive, carrying a redressal mechanism for all industrial problems.
