From Our Special Correspondent
Daijiworld Media Network - Bangalore

Bangalore, Sep 7: The share of manufacturing sector in GDP must be increased sharply to ensure balanced growth, said Agriculture Minister Krishna Byre Gowda in Bangalore on Saturday.

Inaugurating Karnataka manufacturing Summit organized by ASSOCHAM, he said India will have to maintain a healthy balance between different sectors of economy.

He said it was unfortunate that the share of agriculture and industry had gone down sharply while services sector contributed major share of GDP.

The minister also expressed concern at the concentration of industry and manufacturing sector in and around Bangalore and urged industrialists to explore new areas of development.

While land acquisition was a major problem in urban areas specially around Bangalore, he said plenty of land was available in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities.

Gowda urged the industry to identify strategic advantage of various parts of the state and leverage the same and assured of all possible help from the state administration in industry’s efforts to attain growth.

State’s  Additional Chief Secretary M N Vidyashankar said Karnataka had much better rate of conversion of business proposals received during investment meets than the national average.

Responding to questions being raised about conversion of MoUs signed during Global Investor’s Meets of 2010 and 2012, Vidyashankar said that conversion ratio of MoUs is 46% as against national average of 30%.

Dr Vinod Nowal, Chairman of ASSOCHAM Southern Region Task Force on Industry, called for sharp change in policies to give boost to manufacturing sector.

He said it was a misconception that industry was making huge profits and clarified that industry was under severe stress.

Dr Nowal said almost 50 sponge iron units had closed down in the State while rest were working at 30% to 70% capacity.

He expressed concern that not a single captive iron ore mine in the state had been allotted to any industry as all mines were with merchant miners.

In the wake of controversies surrounding the mining activity, entire industry had got a bad name and the steel industry was suffering. This had added to the need for imports leading to increased current account deficit.

The Summit was also addressed by R Shivakumar, President, FKCCI; A N Chandramouli, Senior Vice-President, Bangalore Chamber of Commerce and Industry; M C Dinesh, Chairman, Industry Committee, FKCCI, P K Murugan, Senior Vice-President, JSW Steel, Vikram Parekh, Associate Vice-President, Yes Bank, and  Manjunath Nayaker, Vice-President, NICE.

Earlier welcoming delegates to the Summit, J Crasta, Co- Chairman, ASSOCHAM Southern Regional Council, called for proactive steps to provide fillip to the manufacturing sector in Karnataka.

He referred to a survey being undertaken by ASSOCHAM to get industry’s views on industrial ecosystem of Karnataka and said the survey was still on but early results have given some feedback.

Crasta gave some highlights of the initial findings as follows:

• 61% of respondents feel overall ease of doing business in Karnataka is average or below.
• None have found it very good with overall average rating of 5 on a scale of 1 to 10.
• 89% of respondents felt land acquisition needs significant improvement.
• 79% have expressed the need for improving road connectivity while 58% feel that other modes of connectivity like rail, air and ports needed improvement.
• Almost 84% of respondents felt the management of industrial estates/ areas needs improvement.