Invest India’s Singapore office to serve entire ASEAN later : Piyush Goyal

Setting up of both the offices was announced during Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi’s recent visit to the city state.“Invest India and NICDC office will provide single window facilitation for investors and partners who are coming into India for developing modern technologies and tech based industries,” the minister told reporters.

The announcement of the Invest India office in Singapore was made by the Prime Minister in his meeting with business leaders on Thursday. The office will be a hand-holding office for investors from Singapore in many diverse areas of interest identified in the 6 pillars including semiconductor ecosystem, digital technologies, in skill development and education, and in health care. Advanced manufacturing and connectivity are the other two pillars for bilateral cooperation.

Earlier speaking at the CII India-Mediterranean Business Conclave, Goyal said India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC) that aims to integrate India, Middle East and Europe through UAE, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Israel will add to India’s maritime security and as a strategy it will reduce reliance on very few routes which today can become detrimental to our maritime security and will also help in faster movement of goods and lower logistics cost to our region. As part of the initiative India is expanding its port capacity which has doubled in the last decade. “We hope to double the capacity of ports in the next 5 years.”

India and Mediterranean countries have huge common interest in the Shipping sector, whether in ship building, ownership, maritime sector or in the cruise business, he said. The minister suggested that governments in the Mediterranean region and India should have a working group on tourism as there is a huge potential for cooperation and mutual benefit.

On Indian export performance in the month of July which saw exports decline 1.47% on year because of drop in petroleum product exports, the minister said he is not yet concerned about it as there was no drop in non-petroleum and non-gems and jewellery exports. “There was growth in core domestically produced products. “We would like to encourage petroleum exports too”

Goyal said he has invited the steel industry to understand the unfair competition that some of them are facing and take appropriate measures so that the steel industry remains vibrant, continues to grow and adds jobs to the Indian economy.

On Thursday Goyal hinted at Border Adjustment Tax as one of the options to level the field between domestic manufacturers and imports.