Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, June 8: Association of Industries (AoI) Gangyal in a meeting held under the chairmanship of its president Rajesh Jain, urged upon the Lt. Governor Manoj Sinha to save the existing industry of J&K UT which is dependent on Govt purchases.
AoI president Jain submitted that a vast majority of existing local Micro/Small units have specially been established to cater the requirements of the various Govt Departments /agencies in their development programmes. All these local units have been supplying their products adhering to the prescribed standards duly certified to the entire satisfaction of their procuring consumers and a majority of these units are exclusively dependent upon these procuring Department for their very existence/survival due to locational disadvantages, having very limited market of local products.
Jain said J&K Govt through its Industrial Policy of 1995, 2004 and 2016 has specially protected the genuine rights of the local units by providing purchase/price preference as a Marketing support and J&K Govt through Industrial Policy of 2021-30 vide its clause No. 4.11.3 has protected the local manufacturers. However, the Finance Department has altered the procurement process for the financial year through ‘GeM Portal’ resulting procurement process has adversely impacted the entire economic activity/viability of the local units resulting in their forced closure of units as these units are unable to sell their products to Govt Departments such as PDD, PHE, Forest, Education Departments etc.
It is worthwhile to mention here that in spite of GeM portal, purchase preference is available to local manufacturers even in developed states like Punjab and Rajasthan whereas we are working in underdeveloped state having local disadvantages situated at far end of the country bearing high cost of production and higher input cost. Local units are unable to compete with the manufacturers/dealers of the developed states in absence of marketing support from the Govt. Existing Industries are bound to close down their shutters if marketing support is not provided from Govt resulting in unemployment of thousands of workers along with entrepreneur themselves.
AoI urged the Lt Governor to save the Local Micro and Small Scale Industry by providing the marketing support in the shape of purchase preference for the supply of goods to JKUT Govt Departments.
The meeting was also attended by other office bearers SB Abrol, Balram Gupta, Virendra Jain, Vijay Kumar Sharma and Lavinder Singh Puri.
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