Focus on quality; export competitiveness won’t come from govt subsidies: Goyal to industry

Commerce Minister emphasizes the importance of high-quality products for global markets, urging industry to focus on quality over subsidies.

Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal on Wednesday (October 16, 2024) asked the industry to focus on making high-quality products to tap global markets as export competitiveness will not come from government subsidies or support.

He also said that the government is putting its effort to nudge industry to get into the manufacturing of high quality products as it is a "tough" task to get industry to accept that they should be making quality goods.

Initially, the government faced a huge amount of opposition from the industry on quality control orders.

"Our export competitiveness is not going to come from subsidies or government support. It is not going to come from our closing the doors to the rest of the world. If we are looking at self-reliant India, it can only happen when India will be self-confident and that confidence will only come when we all decide that quality is not our job, it is our duty," the Minister said.

He added that if the Indian industry is not competitive in any product, that can be imported the industry has to work towards competitiveness where it has a comparative advantage with other nations.

The government is taking a series of steps such as rolling out Quality Control Orders (QCOs) to boost manufacturing in the country.

Till 2014, he said, only 14 QCOs covering 106 products were issued, but in the last 10 years, the government has issued as many as 174 such orders covering 732 products to ensure that more and more people will become aligned with better quality standards.