Wednesday, February 17, 2016

Top things to know about MNC regulation

Suggestions so that MNC work in favour of domestic country

Usually it has been found that MNCs comes in domestic market and try to exploit it instead adding value to the domestic market. They become monopolistic in nature since domestic companies are usually small compared to them and are unable to compete with them. 

In UPSC what you need is fewer points but precise answer. 

Ask this question to yourself

What steps can be taken so that MNCs help domestic country in growing instead of exploiting it ?

Many thoughts may come in your mind like
  •  Make Corporate Social Responsibility mandatory under which they will be bound to spend some amount of profit on domestic country and thus they will be helpful to domestic country
  • Often MNCs are accused of bringing only low quality technology to domestic country hence there must be some regulations which set the benchmark for production under which MNC are mandatorily  required to bring high quality technology to the domestic  country.
  • Put local  sourcing norms say 30 percent of raw material to be domesticity sourced and some percentage of labour force must be domestic.
  • Better taxation regime under which an MNC is not allowed to offshore profits for example you can set a limit say that a MNC entering domestic market is not allowed to transfer  more than 60 percent of profit to its parent company.
   Well all of these points are relevant but are theoretical in nature. Ground reality is different. A common theme running across all these points is that we somehow   putting obstacles in the way of MNCs be it compulsory CSR or restriction on nature of technology trasnfer or conditons on local sourcing . Problem here is if you  put restrictions on working of MNC they will not come to your country since they are looking for places where they can produce at low cost and without much restrictions. 

Solution

If government of India wants that MNCs works in favour of our country it should promote those policies that make the domestic company more competitive . If Sony a MNC is allowed in country it with its superior technology will easily able to outdo Indian companies and establish itself as dominant market player as it has no competition from local inefficient companies . Imagine an alternate world in which domestic companies are already competitive and when Sony enters they are ready to put competition to Sony and both domestic and international companies will compete and better product will emerge and everyone will benefit. 

8 suggestions to improve performance of MNCs

1.     Improve operational efficiency of domestic companies

In Last Olympic China won the maximum medals while India was not in even top ten countries . Why so ? Chinese athletics are very competitive how they became competitive while we its neighboring nations remain uncompetitive.
The story will best illustrate the point during Olympic when some media person asked an Chine swimmer the secret of his success he replied ask this questions from my coach . The coach explained that if an athlete comes out of water before 18 hours during a day he is slapped. Such is the rigor of training. Imagine slapping some student in India . Immediately 11 committee will be set up to investigate the matter and political leaders like Rahul Ghandhi will visit  to console !
There is a small country Nicoro Guja ninety percent of its population is poor yet it is able to bring 9 to 8 medals in each Olympic and in our case our Grand total of Olympic medals till date is not 8.
So bottom line is these countries are able to do so because they are providing competitive environment to their athletes

2.     Allow  access to technology  at affordable rate
India needs advanced and modern technology to grow. And we need to purchase that technology from other foreign nations or companies. Usually what happen is we buy a new technology and began using them in our products and break any economic relationship with producer of original technology. The final product may be a success or a failure original technology creator has no stake in its market performance. Instead of using one time purchase of technology route we must adopt equity route such that original technology producer has some stake in the success or failure of product and in this case you will be able to get technology much cheaper.

3.     Proper taxation of profit

Companies both domestic and MNC should be  taxed in such manner that only a portion  of profit is taxed and other portion which is will be reinvested for future growth should be exempted from tax. This will improve future competitiveness of India.

4.     Strategic Alliance be allowed
Rules for merger and acquisition be clear. Rules should be such that allow strategic merger where merger led to greater synergy and efficiency while restricting merger that led to market dominance like monopoly.

5.     Improve domestic export competitiveness

To illustrate this point I will like give you example of Bajaj Scooter. Nowdays nobody uses scooter but Bajaj was one of the best brand known for high quality scooter in India. Once Bajaj participated in an Japan Trade Fair with its trademark scooter. But it mailed miserably. Why? The Japanse customers especially are ladies lean compared to Indian people and they want scooter that are light weight and small in size while Bajaj scooter was heavy . Therefore not suited for Japanese customer.
Point here is Indian companies must understand customer demand better before producing good and not first producing goods and then looking for customers.

Produce things in which you have competitive advantage. If domestic companies are going to produce smart phones they have to compete with giants like Apple who has developed great specialization in development of smart   phones. Instead we must export things that we have some domestic advantages like flowers in Kashmir or technology which are developed here and is new. In that way we will be more competitive in nature.


6.     Promote new area of investment

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