New Delhi: We have to turn crisis into opportunity for creating an “Aatma Nirbhar Bharat” and take steps to ensure that products which we import from elsewhere are manufactured in India, said Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Modi in his address to members of Indian Chamber of Commerce on Thursday said that this also the time to move from command and control economy to plug and play and to built a competitive global supply chain. The government has launched a campaign for self reliance and is pushing import substitution and domestic production in several crucial sectors.

He called upon industry leaders to work towards making India an exporter of all products which it is currently forced to import pointing to the experience with LED bulb manufacturing, which helped cut costs, he said. The government also seeks to get global investors looking to reshore out of China to invest in India.

India is fighting multiple challenges along with Covid-19, including floods, locust attack, earth quakes etc., he said. Citing the campaign to free the country from single use plastic, Modi said it will benefit West Bengal by giving a fresh impetus to the Jute industry. The time had come to revive Bengal’s historical pre-eminence in manufacturing, he said.

Modi also said banking services had now reached the “have nots”. Initiatives such as Jan Dhan accounts and Aadhar have made it possible to reach necessary support to millions of people without leakage, he added. The government cluster based approached to local produced would provide opportunities for all, he said. Organic farming could become a huge movement in the north-east and dominate the global market, Modi said.