The BJP on Monday pledged to make India as a global manufacturing hub over the next five years through improving ease of doing business, strengthening Companies Act and bringing in a new industrial policy with special focus on MSMEs.

“In order to incentivise compliance of law and ease of doing business, we will amend the Companies Act to impose civil liability for technical and procedural defaults of a minor nature thus unclogging the majority of the cases from the courts,” the BJP's manifesto said.

It said the party will strive to further improve ease of doing business and take the country's ranking into top 50. It also promised to announce a new industrial policy to improve the competitiveness of manufacturing and services with an eye on Industry 4.0 in order to gear up for technologies like artificial intelligence and electric mobility.

Special efforts will be made for MSMEs, it said.

“We understand that clustering and network effects are important in order to build competitiveness in cutting edge industries. Therefore, we will invest in creating clusters/networks that can take on the world’s best. Public procurement and government incentives will be used actively to build up these clusters and encourage job creation,” the manifesto said.