On Friday, the president travels to Schenectady, N.Y., birthplace of General Electric, to showcase a new GE deal with India and announce a restructured presidential advisory board to focus on increasing employment and competitiveness.

Obama is naming GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt as the head of a Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. The panel replaces Obama’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board, which had been chaired by former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker.

The president announced late Thursday that Volcker, as expected, was ending his tenure on the panel.

Obama said the new panel’s mission will be to help generate ideas from the private sector to speed up economic growth and promote American competitiveness.

For the president, the visit to upstate New York is also an opportunity to claim credit for tax, trade, and energy policies pursued by his administration as the nation attempts to recover from the worst recession since the 1930s.

The GE plant is benefiting from a $755 million contract with India’s Reliance Power Ltd. to supply gas and steam turbines.

The deal will help support 1,200 manufacturing and 400 engineering jobs in the Schenectady plant, the White House said.

Immelt also has been an advocate of alternative forms of energy, and the GE facility, the company’s largest energy plant, is the future site of GE’s advanced battery manufacturing program. New battery technology has become an Obama pet project as a symbol of innovation, clean energy, and job creation.

In Immelt, Obama has a useful corporate ally. As chief executive of a multinational company, Immelt was one of 20 CEOs who met with the president during a daylong summit at Blair House last month. He was one of 14 U.S. business leaders invited to meet with Chinese President Hu Jintao this week at the White House.

In an opinion piece Friday in The Washington Post, Immelt said the restructured council under his leadership would focus on manufacturing and exports, trade and innovation.

His appointment adds another corporate insider to the White House orbit—earlier this month, Obama named former Commerce secretary and JPMorgan Chase executive William Daley as chief of staff.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.