Covestro - Making Sustainable Choices

Avers Mr. Ajay Durrani, Managing Director, Covestro (India) Private Limited, By 2025, we want to spend 80 per cent of our research and development expenditure in areas that contribute to the Sustainable Development Goals. Currently, Covestro is providing full support for the second year of the Young Champions of the Earth competition, a global competition sponsored by Covestro that aims to identify, support and celebrate outstanding individuals aged 18-30 who have big ideas to protect or restore the environment.

What is your view on the government’s ‘Make in India’ initiative? As a key player in specialty chemicals, how you think this initiative catapulted India into top manufacturing economies? What, according to you, are key hurdles in the path of ‘Make in India’ initiatives?

Make in India has been a great initiative from the government. It has not only given the required impetus to various sectors, but is going to help India in the long run having benefitted various sectors like aerospace, biotechnology, food processing, FDI, chemical, tourism, railway, textile and many more. It has also helped the industry in getting seamless & quick support from the government by eliminating old irrelevant obstacles in the manufacturing sector.

Make in India created a platform and a welcoming environment for commercial sectors from all around the world, to engineer their products in India and sell them anywhere they wish. Due to this fact companies from across the globe making a huge investment in this project, and have thrived successfully, making India a hub for the manufacturing companies.

Lack of skilled labour, access to easy credit and regulatory compliance stands as one of the biggest impediments to the Make in India scheme. A major section of the manufacturing sector comprises of MSME. These companies have faced some issue with respect to funding and operation due to the twin impacts of GST and demonetization. Credit continues to be a key issue for them, and India’s banking system is not in a position to lend much unless its balance sheets are cleared. Though things are improving now, the government would need to provide adequate support.