The Hindu : CII committed to develop North East

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Dec 12, 2002

Business

Business

CII committed to develop North East

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI DEC. 11 . The Confederation of Indian Industry is deeply committed to the development of the North Eastern region and will establish a centre of excellence in handlooms and silk in Guwahati.

Sharing the initiatives being taken by the organisation, CII president, Ashok Soota, told mediapersons that apart from setting up two offices in the North East, one in Kohima and the other in Guwahati, several steps were being taken to promote greater economic activities in the North East.

One of the major problems in the region is unemployment and to address this issue in a limited way, the CII, with the help of its member companies, is arranging training in automobile, appliances, hospitality and healthcare. Also, CII is encouraging member companies to recruit people from the North East States.

Additionally CII is working with the Indian Institute of Entrepreneurship, Guwahati, and has offered mentoring and marketing support to the entrepreneurs.

Our Guwahati Correspondent writes:

The Confederation of Indian Industry has extended its helping hand to Assam for economic development of the State.

The CII president, Ashok Soota, who was here for a day, met the Chief Minister, Tarun Gogoi, today and suggested that considering the funds crunch and infrastructural inadequacies like power and communication, the State Government should concentrate on three specific areas — agriculture, information technology and tourism.

Later, he told mediapersons that he had suggested to the Chief Minister to study the feasibility of applying to Assam the recommendations made to the West Bengal Government by McKinsey, an international consultancy firm, for agriculture. This means giving more stress on growing commercial crops ; developing the agriculture service sector on cooperative basis and introducing IT-enabled services . It will also mean developing the processing industry for value addition to farm products such as fruits and vegetables.

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