Suresh Prabhu is the new Minister of Commerce and Industry, post a cabinet reshuffling that took place on Sunday. The former Railway Minister will take over the role from Nirmala Sitharaman. Sitharaman will take charge of the Ministry of Defence to become the second women defence minister after Indira Gandhi.
Speaking about his ninth cabinet level position Prabhu said, “I am extremely happy that the prime minister has asked me to do something in Make In India, Start-up India and ease of doing business in India. All of these are the flagship programmes of the government which have to be implemented and I look forward to doing that in the right earnest.” Prabhu recently met with Prime Minister Narendra Modi to offer his resignation as the Minister of Railways after taking the blame for the Kalinga Utkal Express’ derailment that killed 23 last month. In a series of tweets, he revealed the Prime Minister had asked him to ‘wait’ instead of resigning.
As the new Minister of Commerce, Prabhu said he will be responsible to ensure faster economic growth, address the challenge of creating more employment opportunities, bring in more foreign direct investments (FDI) and increase exports for greater competitiveness. Prabhu will be representing India in the upcoming Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) negotiations and the upcoming WTO Ministerial in Buenos Aires in December. He will be facing the tough challenge of championing India’s trade interests at RCEP and will have to look for a permanent solution on public stockholding for India’s food security, as promised at the Bali Ministerial 2012, by the WTO members. He will also be announcing the new industrial policy which will be released this October to take the country out of the current industrial slump. A new industrial policy proposal was initially announced by Nirmala Sitharaman. Apart from that, Prabhu will also have to finalize the new Foreign Trade Policy for 2020-2025.
Nirmala Sitharaman, in her tenure as the minister of commerce, introduced several schemes for the benefit of the Indian startup ecosystem. She recently constituted a task force on artificial intelligence to leverage AI for development across various fields and launched a Rs. 2000 crores credit fund guarantee scheme for startups. She also successfully set up the Startup India Hub, a virtual platform to host startups, investors, funds, mentors, academia, incubators, accelerators, corporates, government bodies and more in order to be a dynamic and interactive platform.