Minister Goyal asks manufacturers, FMCG providers, consumers to work collectively to revive manufacturing

"We have now almost four times the number of quality control orders implemented in the last few years than what we had 10 years ago."

Union Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal on Monday asked manufacturers, fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) providers and consumers to work collectively to revive Indian domestic manufacturing at scale, with high quality and at competitive prices, so that India once again provides a large number of jobs, work opportunities, business opportunities, and meets the aspirations of 1.4 billion people. Addressing the inaugural session of Massmerize 2023 in New Delhi, the Union minister said the government over the next two or three years hoped to significantly ramp up focus on quality by bringing in reasonably strict and compulsory but practical quality standards on many more products so that Indian manufacturing is able to withstand irrational competition, increase the scale of production and become more competitive.

The minister said, "As long as we do not recognise the importance of quality in our country, we will not be able to stop this influx of low-quality products. 'Towards that end, we in the government are working to introduce quality standards in a much bigger way." He said: "We have now almost four times the number of quality control orders implemented in the last few years than what we had 10 years ago." The minister opined that the FMCG sector would truly be a driver of economic growth and moving forward, India would be an important consumer market, according to a statement from the ministry of commerce.

He called for the creation and strengthening of a virtuous circle with massive amounts of investment and focus both on the public sector and the private sector to create the necessary building blocks or infrastructure to help the Indian economy grow rapidly. He called for renewed investments in infrastructure, in manufacturing, in innovation, in research and development and in quality. Goyal observed that developed economies had become developed by ensuring significant internationalisation of their economies, by engaging with the world in a bigger way, by focusing on scale, so that they can be more competitive, by building their domestic logistics ecosystem, where infrastructure investments play an important role, by focusing their energies on providing what the consumer really wished for, good high-quality products at competitive prices and in the current context, sustainable goods.

Goyal said sustainability would drive demand in the days ahead. He noted that the government had been focusing relentlessly on sustainabilty accross sectors The Minister noted that the consumer industry in India, FMCGs and other such products have been victims of indiscriminate low-quality imports, because of which India has suffered and Indians have suffered. He said that though India had liberalised its economy and a number of foreign companies and foreign suppliers did come into the country with some of them manufacturing in India, most of them had imported goods into India.

Goyal said that it should have been a period where quality Indian manufacturing at scale had to be strengthened. 'I think we lost out by allowing a lot of indiscriminate, low quality, low-cost goods coming into the country, he rued. The Minister referred to Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) and said that it would help our small retail survive the onslaught of large tech based e-commerce companies. "Our effort will be to encourage more and more startups and small companies even at the local level, small retail the mom and pop stores integrated into the e- commerce ecosystem. And just like UPI was able to democratize payment systems we do hope that ONDC will democratise the e-commerce ecosystem and take its benefits to the people at large," he added. (ANI)

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