S Chandramohan, Chairman, CII (TN) President and Group CFO, TAFE Ltd.
The theme of CII for the year 2019-20 is Competitiveness of India Inc./India @75: Forging Ahead. The five specific sub themes are Employment Generation, Rural-Urban Connect, Energy Security, Environment Sustainability and Governance. Tamil Nadu has specific plans to work on each of these five sub themes.
Employment Generation: Our agenda would be creating next-gen manufacturing, which will also usher in high productivity along with creating more jobs with focus on newer areas of skills. Employment Generation in the agricultural sector is critical to raise the income level of the farmers. Skill development, particularly for the MSME segment would be the priority to improve their competitiveness.
Rural-Urban connect : The Agricultural sector faces the dilemma of high productivity as well as falling income which explains farmer’s demanding better attention. Our attempt would be for providing market linkages, increase in cold storages, value addition, particularly in food processing and horticulture products. The food processing policy recently announced by the Government is a welcome step.
Energy Security: The agenda would be to engage with relevant stakeholders prioritising policy reforms, promote energy efficient initiatives and encouraging investments in this area.
Environment Sustainability: Solid Waste Management, Water Security, Restoration of lakes and water bodies, promoting clean air and electric vehicles, environment conservation and reducing CO2 emissions through green practices and businesses will engage our attention. We have also started working with the Tamil Nadu Government with regard to the implementation of the Ban on Plastics along with the stakeholders.
Governance: Corporate Governance will remain an important role, setting standards and adopting best practices. There is commendable progress in Ease of Doing business (EODB).
With the support of Tamil Nadu Government, we will organise during the year Tamil Nadu Travel Mart to showcase the culture and heritage of Tamil Nadu. We would like to position Tamil Nadu as the medical value travel destination. A Team of Doctors are engaged in connecting 8 hospitals at various places in Tamil Nadu to provide uniform quality of medical services with transparency in pricing. The Government has announced an encouraging startup policy. We want to create an ecosystem to proliferate the startups making use of the policy.
