Asia · Tokyo Wire
Tata Steel CMD TV Narendran said India’s investment cycle is broadening, with capital flowing into infrastructure, space technology, GCCs and data centers. He also highlighted the need to strengthen domestic manufacturing ecosystems, while warning that higher raw material costs remain a challenge. Narendran said greater efficiency, improved ease of doing business and deeper supply chains will be crucial for sustaining India’s manufacturing growth. 3 Min Read Private sector investment is picking up across sectors in India, while economic activity is seeing a good pull in both rural and urban markets, Tata Steel CMD TV Narendran said in an interview with CNBC-TV18 on the sidelines of the 53rd All India Management Association Convention.
Narendran said the overall economic environment was positive, pointing to strong activity in the auto and construction sectors. “I think it's pretty positive. The auto industry has been quite strong for the last year.
I think it's the impact of the GST changes, etc. Construction has also been reasonably strong,” he said. He added that there was a shortage of labour across sectors, while demand was seeing a good pull in both rural and urban India.
“So we're very positive about what's happening economically,” Narendran said. Private investment picking up Narendran said private sector investment was picking up across industries. He noted that steel companies, including Tata Steel and its peers, had already been expanding significantly.
He also expects government investment in infrastructure to continue, saying a lot has been done but much more needs to be done. Narendran also pointed to investment in areas such as space technology, global capability centres (GCCs) and data centers . “Across sectors, we're seeing this as a positive sign,” he said.
Rising input costs remain a challenge Narendran said rising input costs remained a challenge for industries, including steelmakers, in a geopolitically dynamic environment. He said coking coal prices had increased by around $60 over the previous six weeks, while aluminium and zinc prices had also risen. Tata Steel uses aluminium and zinc as inputs.
On the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), Narendran said the industry would have to operate in this changing geopolitical environment while focusing on efficiency and competitiveness. “As an industry, we need to keep working on efficiency. We need to make sure that we are competitive irrespective of the input costs,” he said.
Narendran added that companies needed to deliver value to customers so that they continued to prefer their products and were willing to pay a better price for the value they received. India needs deeper manufacturing supply chains On measures needed to encourage further investment and build long-term manufacturing capabilities in India, Narendran said improving the cost and ease of doing business remained important. He said infrastructure investment helped improve the cost of doing business, while production-linked incentive (PLI) schemes had been successful in bringing some manufacturing activity to India that was not present earlier.
Narendran said the next step was to develop deeper domestic supply-chain ecosystems across industries. He pointed to India's auto industry as an example, saying its development over the past 20–30 years had created world-class auto component companies. He said India should aim to build similar capabilities in electronic components and other sectors, with as much of the value chain as possible located in the country.
Home Economy News Tata Steel’s TV Narendran sees private investment picking up across sectors, says economy looks positive
Source: CNBC TV18
