Lok Sabha Elections 2024: BJP election manifesto promises to make India a global manufacturing hub

Lok Sabha Elections 2024: The BJP party, in its Lok Sabha manifesto released on Sunday, laid an ambition to make India a global manufacturing hub. The BJP-led government at the Centre has been aggressively campaigning with global corporates to invest in India.

Over the past ten years, in its two five-year terms, BJP said it had made significant progress in the manufacturing sector, including the launch of series of programmes like Make in India, Production Linked-Incentive, and simplification of compliances to expand manufacturing. "We will further harness the potential of manufacturing in creating employment opportunities and expanding economic activity," BJP manifesto read.

"We believe that our talent in research and design can be best complimented by expanding the manufacturing sector. We also understand the need for self-reliance and resilience in global value chains," said BJP, asserting that the party will make all efforts to develop the country a manufacturing hub.

Under the Make in India programme, manufacturing has emerged as a major economic sector with a notable success in electronics, defence, mobile, and automobiles. "We will vastly expand domestic defence manufacturing and exports of Made in Bharat defence equipment," BJP said.

In the last ten years, the BJP said the government run by it established a USD 100+ billion electronics manufacturing industry. India is a major engineering and design services hub in the world with many complex products being designed here.

"We will build on this strength to become a major Product Nation by combining our strength in product design services with manufacturing," BJP said.

Based on the principles of PM-Gatishakti, BJP party said government under it will develop industrial cities in different industrial corridors for balanced regional development. "This shall promote industrialisation of backward regions of the country," it said.

Further, it will launch an initiative to foster balanced regional development across all districts of the country. Brand, promotion and exports of One District One Product (ODOP) products will be encouraged under the initiative.

In its manifesto, the party promises to promote manufacturing, research, and development in the railway sector to make the country a leading global railway manufacturing hub.

Aiming to make India a global aviation manufacturing and MRO hub, BJP said it will will bring a commercial aircraft manufacturing ecosystem. "For this we will design a Policy for Aerospace Manufacturing in the country and try to develop our own passenger aircraft."

For pharma sector, it asserted that it will expand Research Linked Incentive schemes, encouraging companies to invest in research for new drugs, chemical entities and new biological entities.