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‘Make for Globe’: PM Modi lays foundation stone for Tata-Airbus Vadodara project
Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that India is moving forward with the mantra of ‘Make in India, Make for the Globe’
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday said that India is moving forward with the mantra of ‘Make in India, Make for the Globe’ and that the day is not far when big passenger aircraft will be manufactured in the country.
He was speaking in Vadodara after laying the foundation stone of a manufacturing facility for C-295 medium transport plane for the Indian Air Force.
The aircraft, to be produced by a consortium of European aerospace company Airbus and the Tata Group, are expected to give a huge push to the government’s initiative of Aatmanirbhar Bharat.
“We have taken a big step in the direction of making India the manufacturing hub of the world,” the Prime Minister, who is on a three-day visit to his home state of Gujarat, beginning today, said in his address. Elections in Gujarat are to be held before year end.
The C-295 Aircraft Manufacturing Facility will be the first aircraft manufacturing facility in the private sector in the country. In September last year, India sealed a deal of over ₹21,000 crore with Airbus Defence and Space, Spain to procure 56 C-295 aircraft to replace the ageing Avro-748 planes of the IAF.
Under the agreement, Airbus will deliver the first 16 aircraft in ‘fly-away’ condition from its final assembly line in Seville, Spain within four years and the subsequent 40 aircraft will be manufactured and assembled by the Tata Advanced Systems (TASL) in India as part of an industrial partnership between the two companies.
“India is making fighter jets, tanks, submarines, medicines, vaccines, electronic gadgets, mobile phones and cars that are popular in many countries. India is moving forward with the mantra of ‘Make in India, Make for the Globe’ and now India is becoming a huge manufacturer of transport aircraft in the world. I can foresee that India will soon be manufacturing big passenger aircraft that will proudly bear the words ‘Made in India’,” the Prime Minister said.
He said that the facility for which the foundation stone was laid today, has the power to transform the country’s defence and transport sector.
Transport aircraft, manufactured here, will not only give strength to the armed forces but it will also help in developing a new ecosystem of aircraft manufacturing, he added.
“Vadodara, which is famous as a cultural and education centre, will develop a new identity as an aviation sector hub”, he said adding that more than 100 MSME suppliers are also associated with the project.
He said that the promise of ‘Make in India, Make for the Globe’ will get a new push from this land as the project will be able to take orders for export to other countries in the future.
“The UDAN (Ude Desh ka Aam Nagrik) scheme has also given our aviation sector a major boost. India will require over 2,000 aircraft in the next 15 years or so. Today, we have taken a step towards meeting this global demand. ‘New India’ focuses on a competitive environment while ensuring quality in the production sector,” Prime Minister Modi said.
“India is presenting the opportunity of low cost manufacturing and high output”, he remarked. He further added that India has a huge talent pool of skilled manpower. India is creating an unprecedented environment for manufacturing in the country, the Prime Minister said while citing examples of creating a simplified corporate tax structure while making it globally competitive, opening up the 100 per cent FDI route, opening up defence and space sectors for the private companies, reforming 29 central labour laws into four codes, abolishing 33,000 compliances and creation of the Goods and Service Tax by putting an end to a complex web of dozens of taxes.
“A new saga of economic reforms is being written in India today and the manufacturing sector is reaping the most benefits from this apart from the states,” he said.
The Prime Minister credited a change in mindset for the success. He said “Today, India is working with a new mindset, a new work culture”. He recalled the time when the reigning notion was that the government was ‘know-it-all’, a mindset that suppressed the country’s talent and the power of the private sector.
“Now following ‘Sabka Prayas’, the government has started giving equal importance to the public and private sector...we have abandoned the makeshift approach of decision making and have come up with various new incentives for investors. We launched the Production Linked Incentive scheme, which made the change visible. Today our policies are stable, predictable and futuristic,” he said.
The Prime Minister also recalled a time when dominant thought was to focus on the service sector as manufacturing was considered to be beyond reach. “Today we are improving both services and manufacturing sectors,” he said. He underlined the importance of a holistic approach that focuses on both manufacturing and service sectors.
“Today India is preparing to stay ahead of everyone in manufacturing. This became possible because in the last 8 years we focused on skill development and created an environment for it. By assimilating all these changes, today India’s development journey in the manufacturing sector has reached this stage,” the Prime Minister said.
Highlighting the investment friendly policies of the government, the Prime Minister remarked that its benefits are clearly visible in the foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows.
“In the last eight years companies from more than 160 countries have invested in India. These foreign investments are not limited to certain industries but are spread across 61 sectors and covers 31 states of India. More than $3 billion has been invested in the aerospace sector alone. Post 2014, investment in the aerospace sector saw five-fold rise as compared to the total investment in 14 years from 2000 to 2014,” he said.
The Prime Minister said that India aims to scale up their defence manufacturing output to more than USD 25 billion by 2025. Of this, more than USD 5 billion will be for exports, he said adding that the defence corridors being developed in Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu will immensely help in scaling up this sector.
Modi also praised the Defence Ministry and the government of Gujarat for organising the biggest ever Def-Expo in Gandhinagar recently. He underlined that all the equipment and technologies displayed in the Def-Expo were made in India. “The reflection of Project C-295 will also be visible to us in the Def-expo of the coming years”, the Prime Minister added.
