Need to look at India’s competitiveness with industry’s demand for higher tariffs: DPIIT secretary

Repeated requests from the industry to hike tariffs if the country is not competitive enough, need to be questioned amid India inking free trade agreements, Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) secretary Amardeep Singh Bhatia said Wednesday.

“There's also a lot of work which has been done in term of reduction in tariffs,” he said at the CII Global Inclusive Finance Summit.

Noting that the weighted tariff has come down substantially and is almost at the world average level, Bhatia said: “There are pressures to increase it by the domestic industry and need to look at why these requests keep coming up and why are we not competitive enough…FTAs have been entered into.”



Bhatia insisted that India can not be looking at domestic markets only as it has to become a part of the global value chain.

The secretary said that there is variance in ease of doing business across states.


“We know what needs to be done but field level implementation needs to be worked on,” he said, adding that the government will have consultations on ways to use land especially which is reclaimed.

“Land pooling initiatives are creating more industrial land for development…India now has 4,000 industrial parks, but infrastructure optimization is key,” he said.

Bhatia said that sector specific interventions are being worked out so that India’s startup movement deepens.

“Look at the startup and innovation ecosystem. What can be outsourced to the startups? What is it the companies which what are problem statements which can be given to the startups?,” Bhatia said, noting that 45% of startups are emerging beyond metros, expanding the innovation ecosystem.