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- In the news
"A tax on imports is a tax on exports!" says FED Director Rahul Ahluwalia. "'Big companies don't go to some place to manufacture because we offer them that we'll raise up tariff walls. In fact, if anything, this reduces the confidence that companies have!' Ahluwalia feels such protectionist measures stem from the mistaken notion that India considers itself to be a big market — which, he says, is not correct from a per capita or spending power parameter," writes K. Sunil Thomas for The Week. Read more.
- July 23, 2024
- In the news
"Our labour laws are only protecting labour from getting jobs and nothing else," says FED's Operating Partner Piyush Doshi ahead of Budget 2024, as he shares his roadmap for really unlocking labour-intensive manufacturing. FED's Advisory Board member Gurcharan Das, also on the panel, explains that only "two out of three cylinders have fired." The one that really needs to fire today is manufacturing, for India to be able to create jobs for its huge workforce. Watch snippets from the pre-budget panel discussion in this Twitter thread.
- July 23, 2024
- Op-Ed
"How many hours do you end up spending on regulatory matters?" we asked Agarwalji, a garment exporter. 'Around 15-20%,' he said, 'approvals and inspections, labour audit, water, building certificate, new site formalities and so on. Every day, I spend a couple of hours going through some of these.' Since this involved government officials, he couldn’t delegate it; officers would insist that the owner be their single point of contact. This is not an exception, but a sad reality facing many manufacturers, specially MSMEs," write Ankur Kothari and Yuvraj Khetan in this piece for Mint.
- June 27, 2024