'India failed to occupy space vacated by China on jobs front'

India could not take advantage of job opportunities vacated by China in sectors like textile, gems & jewellery and leather in absence of appropriate policies, a top Labour Ministry official said.
"Jobs in manufacturing such as textile, gems and jewellery and leather that were vacated by China, we could not take advantage of that.
"And that went to countries like Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, Bangladesh primarily becuase...We did not have appropriate policies for those sectors, be it textiles, gems and jewellery, leather and like that," Labour Secretary Shankar Aggarwal said at a seminar on Compliance of Labour Legislations-Issues and Concern.

He said job opportunities in these sectors will aid in growth, encourage setting up large number of enterprises and help in exports of related products.
India added about 10 million people into the workforce earlier, however, now about 5-7 million join the workforce, as growth in the past few years has mainly been "jobless".
"If we got to create jobs, we got to encourage services sector as well as manufacturing. We were adding almost 10 million people every year in the workforce. This number has come down. However, today we are adding only five-seven million people every year," Aggarwal said.

Aggarwal said it is necessary to create many jobs at every level and to create a mechanism to ensure and encourage people to create more jobs.
OECD last week had forecast China grow at 6.8 per cent in 2015.
"The deceleration reflects the restructuring underway in the Chinese economy as services replace manufacturing and real estate investment as the main driver of growth," the think tank said.