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Following Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s call to “Make in India”, the government on Monday approved a Rs 930 crore scheme to enhance the competitiveness of the capital goods sector.
The decision was taken at a meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs that is chaired by the Prime Minister.
“This scheme, on its implementation, would attempt to make the Indian capital goods sector globally competitive,” said an official release after the meeting, adding that sub sectors that would be covered under the scheme include machine tools, textile machinery, construction and mining machinery, and process plant machinery.
The move comes at a time when the Prime Minister is keen to turn India into a manufacturing hub and would also give a fillip to capital goods production that contracted 3.8 per cent in July this year. The sector however provides nine to 12 per cent of the total manufacturing value added. The consumption of capital goods constitutes a constant share of 17-21 per cent of the total gross domestic investment in the country.
To be implemented during the 12th and 13th Plan period, the scheme would address the issue of technological depth creation in the capital goods sector, besides creating common industrial facility centres.
It would have five components including creation of advanced centres of excellence for R&D and technology development, integrated industrial infrastructure facilities or machine tool parks and setting up common engineering facility centre for textile machinery. It would also include testing and certification centre for earth moving machineries and setting up of a technology acquisition fund under the Technology Acquisition Fund Programme (TAFP) to help the capital goods industry to acquire and assimilate specific technologies.
“The scheme has an estimated outlay of Rs 930.96 crore. The gross budgetary support from the government for the scheme would be Rs 581.22 crore and the balance Rs 349.74 crore would be contributed by the stakeholder industries,” said the release.
‘CCEA clears R4,754-cr power transmission scheme’
New Delhi: The government on Monday cleared a scheme for strengthening power transmission in Arunachal Pradesh and Sikkim at a cost of Rs 4,754.2 crore. “ The Comprehensive Scheme for Strengthening of Transmission & Distribution Systems in Arunachal Pradesh and Sikkim is to be taken up under a new Central Sector Plan Scheme of ministry of power,” said an official release after the meeting of the CCEA.
Pointing out that the intra-state transmission and distribution systems in the North-Eastern states are very weak, the release noted, “Presently, 5 out of 20 districts in Arunachal Pradesh are connected to the transmission network.” ENS
