Employment potential under bulk and discrete manufacturing clusters proposed under Sagarmala

As part of Sagarmala, high potential port-linked industries have been identified which include bulk and discrete manufacturing. Bulk manufacturing industries include steel and steel-multiplier, cement, refining, petrochemical and power while discrete manufacturing industries include electronics, apparel, furniture, footwear and food processing. Cumulatively, these sectors have the potential to create 40 lakh direct and 60 lakh indirect jobs by 2025 .

Direct employment potential:Discrete manufacturing industries contribute the majority share in the employment generation potential in manufacturing clusters.Apparel, leather and footwear and food processing are the most labour intensive sectors(having the highest jobs multiplier), owning to the nature of work. Bulk manufacturing clusters, on the other hand, have limited potential for direct employment creation.

The following table summarizes direct employment potential of individual sectors:

employment potential
Sector No. of clusters
Estimated output per
cluster (INR Cr, 2025)
Estimated value addition
per cluster (INR Cr, 2025)
Jobs multiplier (Direct
jobs/Cr of added value)
Direct jobs (Lakhs)
Electronics 2 162,500 29,871 11 7
Apparel 3 32,500 6,541 48 9
Furniture 3 32,500 6,466 22 4
Leather and Footwear 3 26,000 4,294 42 5
Automotive 1 130,000 23,711 10 2
Food Processing 2 32,500 4,233 32 3
Steel 2 81,400 36,200 3 2
Cement 2 14,000 4,500 1 0.1
Power 3 19,710 4,928 1 0.2
Refinery & Petchem 2 83,250 9,654 2 0.5
Gas based petchem 4 8,125 1,385 6 0.3
Marine clusters 2 26,000 5,200 24 3
Total 37

Indirect employment potential:Bulk and discrete manufacturing clusters also have significant potential to generate indirect employment in downstream industries and supporting services. Indirect jobs multiplier (indirect jobs/direct jobs) for all sectors combined is ~1.5 (1.96 for apparel, 0.84 for furniture, 4.4 for leather and footwear, etc.) which results in additional ~60 lakh indirect job creation potential by 2025 for the proposed clusters.

This estimate does not include 2-3 lakh construction jobs which would be created during the development of infrastructure projects envisaged under Sagarmala (e.g. new ports, port capacity enhancement, road, rail, multimodal). These jobs would be available for the duration of the construction phase of the projects.

  1. Sector wise jobs multiplier (Jobs/Value added) have been used to arrive at employment creation potential. Source : from Annual Survey of Industries, Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, Government of India
  2. World Input Output Database (WIOD)