The head of one of India’s largest car manufacturers says the Government should not be involved in business operations as public sector enterprises were inefficient.
Chair of Maruti Suzuki India, R.C. Bhargava said public enterprises rarely generated enough resources to fund their own growth.
“Public sector companies need constant support to grow and need funds from the Government for capital investments in their respective organisations,” Mr Bhargava (pictured) said.
He said he was basing this view on his own experience when the then Government-owned Maruti Udyog Ltd was transformed into Maruti Suzuki India, majority owned by Japan’s Suzuki Motor Corporation, in 2003.
“Government-run companies are not efficient, and they don’t have productivity,” Mr Bhargava said.
“They are not able to generate profit and resources,” he said.
“Every time, they need Government support to grow.
“Industrial growth has to come from internal resource generation, and a company must create wealth, rather than becoming a wealth eroder.”
He said wealth creation was a fundamental point for any company, whether publicly or privately owned “if this is not met, you will be having a losing system”.
“The country is going to lose because you’re taking away money from the taxpayers to support this inefficient working,” Mr Bhargava said.
He said that when his company was under public ownership “we had to deal with several Parliamentary Committees and had to comply with the Official Languages Act which meant employees having to learn to type on both Hindi and English typewriters”.
Mr Bhargava said these non-value-adding activities had interfered and added costs, preventing the organisation from moving forward and growing.
New Delhi, 6 September 2022
