Indian manufacturers must gear up to face Chinese challenge: Anant Geete

Union Minister for Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises, Anant Geete has urged domestic manufacturers – from public as well as private sectors – to gear up to face challenges arising from Chinese products and new manufacturing technologies such as robotics. 

“The public and private enterprises in India’s manufacturing sector must provide quality products at an affordable cost thereby obtaining economies of scale to face challenges posed by China together with latest technologies of automation and robotics. The era of globalisation has led to cut-throat competition across the world thereby making it a challenge for our manufacturing sector to survive, we need to face up to these global challenges else we might get isolated,” he said while speaking at Assocham’s conference - titled ‘Industry 4.0: Smart manufacturing’.

Though the government is giving a push to the industrial sector for creating more job opportunities, experts fear that the upcoming robotics technology might lead to significant job losses.

Stating that India’s manufacturing sector has been reeling under distress during the course of past few years due to various reasons, Geete said, “The government came to the rescue of domestic steel industry by fixing the minimum import price for steel as China was supplying finished products at the cost at which domestic industry gets raw material. This is how China has been destabilising the domestic steel sector and more or less a similar situation is there in the entire manufacturing sector. We need to compete with China which has spread across the world, we need to accept this challenge.”

The government has been trying hard, through its ambitious ‘Make in India’ program, to galvanise confidence of global investors and industrialists to set up their manufacturing units in India. “Our first priority should be to save our domestic industry including both private and public sector enterprises as they will play the most significant role in development of programs like Make in India,” added Geete.