Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar heads GoM on manufacturing policy

NEW DELHI: A group of ministers, headed by Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar, has been formed to resolve inter-ministerial differences stalling the national manufacturing policy which aims at giving a boost to the sector.

The Policy which was placed before the Cabinet on September 15 could not be cleared in the wake of differences among ministries of environment, labour and commerce and industry on the issues of relaxing green and labour laws in the proposed mega-industrial enclaves.

The manufacturing policy being piloted by the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) aims at creating 220 million jobs in the next 15 years and taking the share of the sector to 25 per cent of the country's GDP by 2020 from the from 15-16 per cent at present.

Both Environment Minister Jayanthi Natrajan and Labour Minister Mallikarjun Kharge did not support the draft policy put up before the Cabinet by Commerce and Industry Minister Anand Sharma, sources said.

Besides Pawar, the GoM would comprise Natrajan, Kharge, Sharma, Law Minister Salman Khurshid and Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises Minister Virbhadra Singh.

The Environment Minister has raised objections to the DIPP proposal which says that only hazardous units in the National Investment and Manufacturing Zones (NMIZs) should be subjected to Environment Impact Assessment (EIA).

"But they (Environment Ministry) want that each individual unit should be governed by EIA irrespective of being hazardous or not," an official said.

The Labour Ministry does not want that a single entity, as proposed in the draft policy, to take over the statutory functions like provident fund, medical claim and insurance of the small and medium enterprises.