Clarity on FAME sought

India needs to import better technologies like electric vehicles in the automobile and auto component sector to ensure better quality of life for its citizens, said a senior government official.

Automobile and auto component sector contributes about 7.2 per cent to India’s overall gross domestic product (GDP), creates over 30 million jobs and almost 25 per cent of its total manufacturing is exported abroad.

This importance of the sector was highlighted by Amitabh Kant, CEO of the National Institution for Transforming India (NITI Aayog) in New Delhi on 19 Dec 2017.

“So, whatever we do we must understand that the role of automobile and auto component sector must continue to grow and expand, to be a job creator, to be a GDP contributor and to play a major role in exports,” said Kant.

He said that in the electric vehicular segment, objective is to accelerate the pace while ensuring that India maintains its size and scale, its GDP share, employment share and that is possible only if we are able to produce to size and scale.

“We will continue to support this movement in a very big way, we will continue to support all OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturers) and Indian manufacturers, we would like major disruptions to take place in India, we would like interoperable charging systems and we would like to support Electric Vehicles (EVs) by a vast range of initiatives like lower road taxes.

“The government will act as a catalyst to support this entire movement so that automobile and auto component sector continues to play a very major and significant role in India’s GDP, job creation as well as exports,” elaborated Kant.

“As a policy framework this cuts across several departments – Ministry of Road Transport, Power, Heavy Industries but we in NITI Aayog will continue to coordinate and drive this movement,” he said further.

“The change is in-evitable but we should do it in a manner where we do not disturb combustion vehicle manufacturing, we should do to size and scale which will enable India to become centre for manufacturing, battery manufacturing for usage as well as for exports,” he pointed out.

“It is possible to do this in India is because our per-capita usage of car is still very low,” he added.

Meanwhile, Delhi Transport Minister, Kailash Gahlot has sought clarity on Union Government’s FAME Scheme (Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of Hybrid and Electric Vehicles), a program of incentives offered to EV buyers to help improve adoption and sales.

“Even under the FAME scheme, there are lot of gaps and there is lot of ambiguity, like for instance there is no clarity amid manufacturers when asked whether or not they would qualify in the kilometre scheme,” said the Delhi Transport Minister.

“More clarity in this regard will help us move swiftly,” he added.

The International Conference on ‘Electric vehicles: Future roadmap for India’ was held by ASSOCHAM. fii-news.com