Buyer, seller network vital: Ganesh

Pondicherry, Mar 3 (UNI) Networking buyers and sellers involving small and medium enterprises(SMEs) is extremely important for Indian manufacturing sector to enhance its competetiveness in global market, Rane Group Vice Chairman L Ganesh today said.

Inaugurating Index-2006, a focused vendor development and business meet organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) here today, Mr Ganesh said with competetiveness being India's only edge over Chinese competetion, the country had to build a prosperous vendor community by taking advantage of the sourcing destinations such as Pondicherry which had vibrant SME clusters.

The Indian manufacturing sector could achieve the targetted growth rate of 12 percent only when it enhanced its competetive edge in the areas of quality, cost, delivery, safety and employee morale.

Though the growth of IT and services sector had helped India build a strong brand image,the manufacturing sector, too, had an equally important role in contributing to the economy.

The western countries had compelling reasons to outsource their manufacturing activities to Asian nations, particularly India and China.

Though China posed a real challenge to India, western countries preferred India as the latter had better Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) and patents regime.

Addressing the gathering, CII Souther Region Chairman R Parasauraman said the confederation was focusing on promoting cluster approach among SMEs and linkage oppertunities for the sector through buyer-seller meets.

The tax incentive was one of the prime attractions of Pondicherry and added time had come to address the underlying issues and promote the inherent competetiveness of the union territory.

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