The Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated Vanijya Bhawan, the new office complex of the Commerce Ministry, and launched the NIRYAT portal in Delhi today.
Addressing the gathering, the Prime Minister said, “Today another important step has been taken in the direction of the journey of Citizen-Centric Governance in New India as the country has got the gift of a new and modern commercial building as well as an export portal. While one is physical, the other is digital infrastructure
Referring to many examples of the recent past, the Prime Minister said that in the new work culture of the New India, completion date is part of SoP and is strictly adhered to. He remarked that it is only when the government's projects do not hang for years and are completed on time that the taxpayer of the country gets respected.
Now we also have a modern platform in the form of the PM Gatishakti National Master Plan and this Vanijya Bhawan will give a push to the nation’s ‘Gati Shakti,’ he remarked.
The Prime Minister said the new Vanjiya Bhawan was also the symbol of his Government’s achievements in the field of commerce during this period. He recalled that at the time of foundation stone laying, he had stressed the need for innovation and improvement in the Global Innovation Index. Today, India is ranked 46th in the Global Innovation Index and is continuously improving.
He pointed out that he had also talked about improving ease of doing business at that time and today more than 32,000 unnecessary compliances have been removed.
The Prime Minister said, "last year, despite the historic global disruptions, India’s exports stood at a total of $ 670 billion (Rs 50 lakh crore). Last year, the country had decided that despite every challenge, it has to cross the threshold of $ 400 billion ( Rs 30 lakh crore) merchandise export. We crossed this and created a new record of export of $ 418 billion (Rs 31 lakh crore)."
“Encouraged by this success of the past years, we have now increased our export targets and have doubled our efforts to achieve them. The collective effort of everyone is very necessary to achieve these new goals”, he added.
The Prime Minister said that NIRYAT – National Import-Export for Yearly Analysis of Trade portal will help in breaking silos by providing real time data to all stakeholders. “From this portal, important information related to more than 30 commodity groups exported to more than 200 countries of the world will be available. In the coming time, information related to district-wise exports will also be available on this. This will also strengthen the efforts to develop the districts as important centres of exports”, the Prime Minister said.
He also pointed out that GST was new at the time of the foundation stone laying of the Vanjiya Bhawan building, today, Rs 1 lakh crore GST collection per month has become commonplace. For the Government’s e-market place, 9 thousand crore rupees worth orders were discussed then, today, more than 45 lakh small entrepreneurs are registered on the portal and orders worth more than 2.25 lakh crore have been placed. The Prime Minister had talked about 120 Mobile units at that time up from just 2 in 2014, today this number has crossed 200. Today India has 2300 registered Fin-tech startups, up from 500, 4 years ago.
At the time of the foundation stone laying of the Vanijya Bhawan India used to recognize 8000 startups every year, today, this number is more than 15000, the Prime Minister informed.
The Prime Minister underlined the role of increasing exports in the transition of a country from developing to developed country. The Prime Minister said that in the last eight years, India has also been continuously increasing its exports and achieving export goals.
Mr Piyush Goyal, Union Minister of Commerce & Industry, Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution and Textiles, while addressing the event said that Prime Minister’s vision is to make a modern India by bringing transparency to the system.
He said that Vanijya Bhawan will be made completely digital and will become a symbol of India’s growing power on the global platform.
