India plans 100 industrial parks as US pledges $60bn investment

India and the United States are working as complementary partners to build resilient supply chains, backed by more than $60 Billion in American investment commitments over the last six months, Union Minister of Commerce and Industry Piyush Goyal announced at the American Chamber of Commerce Annual Leadership Summit in New Delhi. Highlighting India’s economic resilience, which saw its growth forecast upgraded from 6.4 per cent to 6.5 per cent despite ongoing global conflicts, the Minister outlined a holistic manufacturing ecosystem driven by a new area-based development model called the Bhavya scheme, designed to establish 100 integrated industrial parks across the country featuring worker housing and modern social amenities.

To deeply integrate Indian manufacturers into international supply chains, the Government is launching a coordinated technology and skill development initiative spearheaded by the MSME Ministry and the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT).

A core pillar of this strategy is the proposed Export Promotion Mission, which will assist smaller enterprises in securing globally recognised quality certifications.

Furthermore, regulatory bodies including the Export Inspection Council, the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS), and FSSAI are actively collaborating to deploy international-standard testing and quality infrastructure. To ease severe working capital constraints within supply networks, the Minister also appealed to major corporate buyers to voluntarily accelerate cash flows by clearing MSME invoices within seven days of product approval, moving well ahead of the statutory 45-day payment mandate.

From the perspective of India’s leather and footwear industry, the Minister’s policy directives offer crucial structural interventions for a sector heavily reliant on MSME tanneries and component manufacturers. The area-based framework under the Bhavya scheme directly addresses the sector's long-standing need for dedicated, self-contained manufacturing clusters equipped with shared eco-compliant infrastructure, while the Export Promotion Mission provides a vital fiscal bridge for small-scale exporters currently locked out of premium Western markets due to strict environmental and chemical compliance mandates. Crucially, the Minister's push for advanced domestic testing facilities and a compressed seven-day corporate payment cycle represents a highly practical remedy for the industry's acute liquidity pressures and high testing costs, offering footwear manufacturers the financial flexibility needed to aggressively pivot from low-value contract assembly to high-margin design and proprietary brand creation.