On Friday, India’s Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman asked industries to work out strategies as to how businesses operating in developed countries can look at India as a production or sourcing hub amid recession fears in the western countries.

Minister said that India has introduced many facilitation and tweaked rules to attract foreign investment into India and has also engaged with industries wanting to co-locate in the country.

“As much you are preparing yourself for a long-drawn recession in the Western world, in the developed world, I think it is also the best time for you to work out strategies for drawing those manufacturers from there to India. Even as they are headquartered there, it might be useful for them to think of sourcing many things from here and producing from here at least for markets in this part of the globe,” Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said at an event.

The Minister asserted that the suspected long-drawn recession, which is likely to affect Europe, is not just going to affect exports by Indian businesses. 

“It (the recession) gives an opportunity for many of the investments which are there, which are now looking for a different place from where activities can continue to happen,” Sitharaman said.

India is also going to draw attention and many industries are co-locating themselves. Inc to focus also on manufacturing while rejecting the hypothesis that the country should not follow China’s model of manufacturing-led growth, she added.

“If there are voices suggesting that India should not be focussing on manufacturing, but it should focus only on services, I am sorry, no. We should be focussing on manufacturing, we should be focussing on newer areas of services,” she further said.

Finance Minister underlined the need to strengthen manufacturing and asked the industry to look at innovations by startups and find ways to scale them. Added that regarding the upcoming Budget the spirit of the previous budget will be followed to prepare India for the next 25 years.