Consensus Building of national and state issues important – CII

New Delhi, August 29, 2012: With an objective to align the vision of Punjab’s Industry with state’s parliamentarians and set an actionable agenda for inclusive growth of Punjab, a Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) delegation comprising senior Industry leaders from Punjab met with Punjab MPs here yesterday late evening.

Dr Rattan Singh Ajnala, Akali MP from Tarn Taran lamented the fact that youth are migrating from villages to cities because of lack of employment avenues. He further suggested that Agro based small scale Industry should be encouraged to make Agriculture more viable and profitable. “Education and skills upgradation of the youth of border districts and making them employable is highly imperative”, he added.

Avinash Rai Khanna, BJP MP from Hoshiarpur, highlighted the need to give impetus to the sectors like Agro processing, mobile phone manufacturing and the Dairy Industry. He also suggested that Parliamentary committees should be extensively used to raise awareness and formulate consensus on key issues confronting Punjab Industry and state.

Among other MPs, Paramjeet Kaur Gulshan from Faridkot and Ravneet Singh Bittu from Nawanshahar also interacted with the CII members.

Deepak Mittal, Chairman, CII Punjab State Council and Managing Director, International Tractors Limited shared the challenges and issues confronting the state and how Punjab needs to capitalise on its inherent strengths in the sectors such as agro processing, textiles and light engineering.

D L Sharma, Vice Chairman, CII Punjab State Council, while briefing the parliamentarians on CII’s initiatives in Punjab, expressed the need to market and promote Punjab as an ideal investment destination. He apprised the MPs of CII’s initiative of setting up a Skill Gurukul at Nawanshahar, where school dropouts would be trained on hard skills in old gurukul style setting and then employed by the Industry.

Sharma also highlighted the issues pertaining to infrastructure, power, skill and water management faced by the state.

Rakesh Bharti Mittal, Past Chairman, CII Northern Region and Vice Chairman and Managing Director, Bharti Enterprises Limited shared CII’s view point on GST, FDI in retail and Land acquisition Bill and sought their support & consensus on major policy decisions pertaining to their implementation.

Mittal also stressed the need to adopt PPP in school education and initiate pilot projects in border areas which would help bring employment avenues and initiate economic activity in the region. He also felt that parity in taxation is imperative for the growth of food processing Industry in the state.

Malvinder Mohan Singh, Chairman, CII Northern Region and Group Chairman, Fortis Healthcare Limited shared some of the key initiatives taken by CII to bring investments into Northern states in India and enhance the brand image of NR states. He also shared that CII would be organising Invest North conclave to showcase investment opportunities in the north in November.