Govt aims to grow auto sector turnover to ₹15 lakh crore in 5 years: Gadkari

Union Road Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari has said that the government aims to increase the turnover of the automobile industry to ₹15 lakh crore within the next five years as against the current turnover of ₹7.5 lakh crore, out of which ₹3 crore comes from exports.

While speaking at the inauguration of the Maruti Suzuki and Toyota Tsusho Group's government-approved scrapping facility in Greater Noida, the minister stated his vision for the country's automobile industry. “My aim is to make the auto industry to the volume of ₹15 lakh crore within the next five year."

While India is aiming for net zero carbon emissions by 2070, Gadkari also highlighted that the government has been encouraging the usage of CNG, LNG, green hydrogen, ethanol fuels and electric vehicles in the transportation system to achieve this target. The target was recently announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the COP26 summit.

The country's current import of fossil fuel is amounts to ₹8 lakh crores and this figure could reach as much as ₹25 lakh crores in the next five years. To bring this down and encourage the use of alternate fuels, the government has been working on diversifying agriculture towards energy and power sectors.

Bioethanol is a motor fuel that comes from sugarcane and molasses and the government has already given permission for production of bioethanol from rice, corn and foodgrains as well as decided to open ethanol pumps just like petrol pumps. "It is a win-win situation for all stakeholders. It can help in tackling pollution and it is also good for the tribal, agricultural areas of the country," Gadkari said.

He also spoke about the importance of vehicle scrappage policy and opening of such centres, stating that this will generate at least 2 lakh jobs directly and will boost the sales of automobiles. "Through the vehicle sales, incremental GST revenue worth ₹30,000-40,000 lakh crore is also generated, which is beneficial for the government as well," he added.

Further, scraping will provide raw materials like aluminium, steel and copper that will be made available at lower costs to reduce the production cost of the vehicles, reducing raw material costs by at least 33 per cent. "It will reduce our dependence on imports as we still import materials like aluminium, copper and many other things. The industry's issue of shortage of semi-conductors will be resolved by this policy," Gadkari added.

(with inputs from ANI)