India To Focus On Services Sector Exports

Emphasising on the need to provide full-time employment to several jobless and under-employed people in the country, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has stressed on the need to create more jobs in the manufacturing as well as the services sector, during Services Conclave, 2014 organised by CII in New Delhi.

“The services sector exports compensate for the deficit in the merchandise exports. We should focus on low lying fruits like tourism, research and development and education among others, where it is easier and quicker to achieve results,” said the finance minister.

Arun Jaitley further added that services sector contributes nearly 60% to the GDP while the manufacturing sector contributes only 15% to the economy. “Our effort is to increase its share to 25% to provide sustainable employment to the people,” he noted.

Commenting on the globalisation of the services across the world, Jaitley pointed out that the markets are now consumer driven and patriotism and jingoism did not influence consumers’ decisions. “They go for quality and price competitiveness. Several developed countries had taken a stand against Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) in the case of IT and IT enabled services (ITeS), which has now fallen flat as the consumers want to enjoy best services at best prices,” averred the finance minister.

Apart from IT sector, the Union minister also asserted that India has a huge potential in marketing services in sectors such as education and healthcare. Jaitley explained that India could develop itself as a regional educational hub, and attract students from other developing countries for higher studies. Besides, India can also emerge as a strong player in the healthcare sector by providing affordable healthcare services to patients from developing countries.

It’s important to note that India has emerged as a strong player in the medicine industry by producing affordable medicines, which are exported to developing countries.

However, the minister also reiterated government’s intent to develop the manufacturing sector in India. “Make in India campaign aims to make Indian products more competitive in terms of quality and price. At present, there are many issues that need to be addressed such as labour reforms, capital flows, providing infrastructure and trade facilitation measures. The government will resolve these issues for different sectors in the industry to grow rapidly,” said Jaitley.