India must position itself as alternative supply source: Ficci

Lucknow: With many industrial sectors, including pharma, staring at shortage of raw materials due to the coronavirus epidemic in China, industry body Ficci on Thursday pitched for incentivising local manufacturers to exhort them towards making investments and tackle supply disruptions.

"There should be incentives and other opportunities to fast track investments in India and position India as an alternative source," Secretary General of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (Ficci) Dilip Chenoy said.

He welcomed the "very responsive" approach of the finance ministry and the Niti Aayog to handle the situation. Both the finance ministry and the Niti Aayog were "very responsive and the idea of doing sectoral approach to this (problem) and setting up of an inter-ministerial coordination system to address was also appreciable", he said on the sidelines of an event here.

Noting that there were two or three major types of problems, Chenoy said certain companies in India were dependent on raw materials from China and inputs, and they had varying degrees of stocks available with them.

"Therefore, the idea is to find out if there is any way to ensure quicker availability of products and components that have been dispatched from China and were enroute India by shortening the quarantine time or doing some treatment to reduce the quarantine time so that these are available to the companies here," he said.