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We do not have business friendly environment: Ficci Chief

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Press Trust of India New Delhi
Holding poor implementation of policies responsible for the current state of economy, new Ficci President Sidharth Birla today said a business- friendly environment is absent in the country.

"We do not have business friendly environment. We have so many regulations," Birla, who took over as the head of the industry body on last week, told PTI.

He said that there was no problem with the policy but there has been "paralysis after policy" resulting in poor implementation of the policies.

"What actually happened is that the policy was followed by paralysis. Policy ke badd kuch nai hua (nothing happened after announcement of several policies)," he said.
 

The business urgently needs decision and implementation, he said, adding that "80 per cent of the concerns of business can be addressed by good implementation and decision".

Citing the example of the FDI policy in the multi-brand retail, the President said that its implementation "was left on states and the policy started getting confused.".

"I am not saying that it (30 per cent mandatory local sourcing by global retailers) was for bad intention, but it got confused. So when it got confused, it was paralysis after policy," he added.

In September last year. The government permitted 51 per cent foreign direct investment (FDI) in the multi-brand retail sector.

As per the policy, at least 30 per cent of the value of procurement of manufactured/processed products shall be sourced from Indian 'small industries'. Several global retailers have raised their concerns over the sourcing restriction.

India's economic growth hit a decades low of 5 per cent in 2012-13 and during the first half of the current year, GDP grew by only 4.7 per cent.

Industrial production entered the negative territory after three months, contracting by 1.8 per cent in October this year mainly due to poor performance of the manufacturing sector.

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First Published: Dec 23 2013 | 10:22 PM IST

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