CII will facilitate creating 10l jobs in TS, AP over 5 yrs

Hyderabad: The Confederation of Indian Industry, Southern Region (CII-SR) is working closely with the State governments and industry in Southern part of India to facilitate in generating 25 lakh jobs in the next five years. "The industry body aims to create 5 lakh jobs each in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh by 2027, said Suchitra Ella, Chairperson of CII-SR & Co-Founder of Bharat Biotech International Ltd.

While addressing her maiden Press Conference in Hyderabad on Wednesday, she said that to achieve this ambitious goal of creating 25 lakh employment opportunities, CII has chalked out a two-pronged strategy – first to promote Southern States as an attractive investment destination globally, and second, to work with existing industries for expansion of their business operations in Southern Region.

The Southern States leadership in Ease of Doing Business supported by stable governments are game changers in achieving this milestone on job creation, she said adding that the CII-SR's theme 'Beyond South India@75' will broadly fall under the focus areas of policy and regulatory excellence, enhancing core competitiveness, protecting lives and livelihood, societal connect and sustainability.

Outlining the key strategy areas for the year 2022-2023, Ella said that the topmost priority will be to work closely with all the Southern State governments on policy engagement initiatives with special focus on ease and cost of doing business. On the policy front, formation of CII – State Government Consultative Forum in Southern States is a key priority this year.

CII has set up a similar forum in Kerala. It is working with the State governments of Telangana, Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry for setting up a CII – Government Consultative Forum with an aim to promote industrial development and improve ease of doing business in the respective States. It is also stressing on the development of tier II and tier III industrial cities.

Ella said, "Districts are the growth engines of the State. We must transform tier II and tier III cities as industrial hubs. CII-SR has taken specific initiatives to promote these tier cities across the region. As CII-SR has 15 physical offices and 9 hybrid offices, strengthening our engagement with industries in tier II and tier III cities will lead to an overall economic growth."

"CII will lay special emphasis in the growth of primary and emerging sectors in each of the Southern States. Defence & aerospace, electronics, agriculture & food processing, pharma, biotechnology, AI & robotics, ayurveda, automobiles, textiles, logistics and tourism would be given special focus as they have huge potential for creating employment opportunities in the States," she added. Going global is the new imperative for Indian industry in alignment with the objectives of expanding exports. To promote exports, CII will work with States in bringing out exclusive policy on manufacturing exports which is going to be very important for the future of Indian industry. CII has been continuously focusing on development of MSMEs. It will focus on their various business development activities.

CII launched a new initiative named Light House to enhance the personal competitiveness of SME members and support in their business growth in all Southern States. Over 100 SMEs will be benefitted directly through this initiative. Besides this, more thrust would also be given to advisory services on IPR, capacity building programmes and creating B2B platforms in all major business forums.

The industry body has been advocating environmental sustainability through green initiative. It is working with the Indian Green Building Council and CII Green Business Centre towards increasing the green foot prints and IGBC rated projects in Southern Region. In Southern Region alone, over 2,082 green building projects have been completed with green footprints of 2.17 billion sft.

CII would work on the rural urban balance by making engagement with select districts in the region to create Industrial growth and Job creation. It would also focus on digital agriculture towards empowering farmers and enhance their income through adoption of information technology in farm practices. It is organising a major exhibition in Chennai called 'FoodPro' in the first week of August 2022.