Ficci roadmap for 20m more jobs in 10th Plan

The Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (Ficci) has suggested a three-pronged approach to employment generation, which if implemented will lead to 20 million new jobs against the 11.6 million envisaged in the 10th Plan document.

According to a Ficci study, legislative changes need to be introduced in the areas of labour. Second, appropriate market mechanisms have to be put in place for quality infrastructure facilities at competitive prices and improved flow of credit. Also, the government should focus on human resource development, and provide a social security net.

Ficci believes employment will be a critical factor in the near term as it has not increased adequately.

Employment elasticity of output in all sectors has gone down from 0.52 over the years 1983 to 1993-94 to 0.16 over 1993-94 to 1999-2000.

The Ficci report has also prescribed a revamp of the policy matrix to bring it closer to international practices in Asian countries, which will help India improve its employment elasticity and restore it to the levels attained in the early 1980s.

"Full implementation of these steps should help improve employment elasticity of manufacturing from 0.33, experienced in the late 1990s, to as much as 0.75. Such an improvement in employment elasticity in manufacturing will push up employment generation in the Tenth Plan period by an additional 15.8 million. This together with the 4.2 million additional employment that is expected to be created in the manufacturing sector through other policy changes and programmes will take the additional employment generated in the Tenth Plan period to 20 million," Ficci said n a statement.

According to the study, the employment potential in the services sector is expected to get a further boost as most of the major segments have maintained stable levels of growth.

Changing trends in consumption patterns indicate that services like education and health will grow further as a larger inflow of personal incomes into the sector shall boost demand.

In areas like insurance, the entry of private sector players and greater competition is expected to further boost employment prospects. The other major area that offers substantial generation of new employment opportunities is the infotech-related services.