CHENNAI: In a bid to woo investments in the defence industrial corridor, Tamil Nadu government is planning to tweak the Aerospace and Defence Industrial Policy, which was unveiled at the Second edition of global Investors Meet, according to Chairperson and MD of TIDCO, Usha Kakarala.
Kakarala spoke at the fifth edition – Virtual Conference on Aerospace & Defence Manufacturing Technologies with the theme of Empowering India with “Aatma Nirbhar Bharat Mission” organised by the Tamil Nadu Technology Development & Promotion Centre of Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) in partnership with Society of Indian Defence Manufacturers (SIDM) through a Virtual Platform.
The policy, which was unveiled by then Defence Minister Nirmala Seetharaman a year ago, will include more investment packages to woo investment in the defence corridor, a top official in the Industry
department told The New Indian Express.
It is learnt that Tamil Nadu is targeting investments worth USD 10 billion in the next five to 10 years in the six clusters identified in the state.
The six clusters include Chennai, Coimbatore, Kancheepuram, Krishnagiri, Salem and Trichy.
The policy by Tamil Nadu stresses on the need to create an end to end ecosystem for aerospace sector development covering design, engineering and manufacturing of aircraft for the civil and defence sector.
The plan is also to attract Original equipment manufacturers and Tier-1 suppliers and India majors as anchor units in the state by providing required facilities and support at competitive rates, the official said.
Dr G Satheesh Reddy, Secretary, Department of Defence, Research and development and Chairman, Defence Research and Development Organisation, highlighted that for India's technology base to grow, there is a need to develop technology in-house.
He highlighted that DRDO is filtering out the patents which are promising for the industry and added that 87 percent of Akash Missile System was developed where subsystems and technology came from the industry highlighting the success of public-private partnership.
There are a lot of schemes available which will support and handhold industries to do in house production.
Shripad Yesso Naik, Minister of State for Defence, said the Covid-19 has given opportunity for Tamil Nadu to attract new investment from companies in countries like Germany, Finland, Taiwan, France, Korea, Japan, China, the US, Australia, the UK and the Netherlands.
The government is focusing on developing a strong domestic capability in defence to give greater impetus for economic growth, skilled job creation in manufacturing and to support growth of domestic manufacturers and MSMEs.