Mumbai: The National Skill Development Policy, which had been devised by the erstwhile Congress-led UPA Government in 2009, is currently being revised by the Centre and is likely to be out in the next couple of months.
"As per the existing National Skill Development Policy, 2009, it needs to be revised every five years and we are already into the fifth year of the ongoing plan period now.
"We are already working on a new five-year policy and it is likely to be out within a couple of months from now," Union Minister for Skill Development and Entrepreneurship (independent charge) Rajiv Pratap Rudy told reporters.
He was speaking on the sidelines of a retail summit here today.
"We are going into the shortcomings, the constraints, the issues involved and of course with reference to the modern time to match the challenges, which are perceived to be there. We have to look into the target which was first announced in the 2009 policy. I don't think if we have come close to those numbers," he said.
The 2009 policy says that by the year 2017, when the ongoing 12th plan comes to a close, the government will be able to provide skill development to 5 crore people by 2017 and another 45 crore people by 2022.
"I think we are nowhere into the figures. We need to look back at the figures again and see how we raise the resources to match the figures," Rudy said.
The ministry is looking at doubling the contribution of the manufacturing sector to the country's economy. Today, 60 per cent of country's GDP is into services sector and out of which, 25 per cent goes to the industry. Again 12.5 per cent of this is into the manufacturing sector.
"We have to take the manufacturing sector from the currently existing mark of 12.5 per cent to 25 per cent, assuming that there is going to be 7-8 per cent GDP growth in the country in future. So, this 12.5 per cent is specialised hard skill, which is going to pose the biggest challenge before us," he said.
