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VADODARA: The country has emerged as a major international manufacturing hub because of the government’s policies that are “stable, predictable and futuristic”, PM Narendra Modi said Sunday and exhorted global defence majors to make military hardware in India.

Vadodara: PM Modi lays foundation stone of manufacturing facility to produce C-295 transport aircraft

Vadodara: PM Modi lays foundation stone of manufacturing facility to produce C-295 transport aircraft

The PM was addressing a gathering of industrialists and industry representatives here as he laid the foundation stone of the Tata-Airbus C295 plant, India’s first transport aircraft manufacturing unit for the IAF.
“Today India is working with a new mindset and new work culture,” the PM said. “India is making fighter jets, tanks, submarines, medicines, vaccines, electronic gadgets, mobile phones and cars that are popular in many countries.”
Moving forward with the mantra of ‘Make in India, Make for the Globe’, the country is now becoming a major manufacturer of transport aircraft in the world, he said.
“I can foresee that India will soon be manufacturing big passenger aircraft that will proudly bear the words ‘Made in India’,” the PM said. He said the new facility in Vadodara has the power to transform the country’s defence and transport sectors.
The Tata Group will manufacture 40 C295 tactical transport aircraft at the Vadodara facility in cooperation with European aerospace major Airbus following a Rs 21,935 crore agreement in September last year. India sealed the deal with Airbus Defence and Space to procure 56 of the aircraft to replace IAF’s ageing Avro-748 planes that entered service in the early 1960s.
The agreement states that Airbus will deliver 16 aircraft to the IAF in ‘fly-away’ condition from its final assembly line in Seville, Spain, between September 2023 and August 2025. The rest will be made in India.
“It is for the first time that such a big investment is being made in the Indian defence sector. The transport aircraft manufactured here will not only strengthen the armed forces but will also help develop a new ecosystem of aircraft manufacturing,” the PM said.
The first Made-in-India aircraft is expected to roll out of the Vadodara plant in September 2026 and the remaining 39 by August 2031. “Vadodara, which is known as a cultural and education centre, will now develop a new identity as an aviation sector hub,” PM Modi said.
Commenting on the future of India’s aviation sector, he said India was about to become the Top 3 in the world in terms of air traffic. “India will need more than 2,000 aircraft in the next 15 years as there is a tremendous demand for passenger and cargo aircraft,” he said.
The PM said that defence and aerospace sectors are going to be the crucial pillars of the ‘Aatmanirbhar Bharat’ push in the coming years. “We aim to scale our defence manufacturing beyond US $25 billion by 2025. Our defence exports will also exceed US $5 billion,” Modi said. He said that defence corridors are being developed in Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, which will immensely help in scaling up this sector.
India is presenting a global opportunity for the world plagued by the coronavirus pandemic, the PM said. Highlighting the investment-friendly policies of his government, the PM said the benefits are clearly visible in the FDI (foreign direct investment) inflow.
“Over the past eight years, companies from more than 160 countries have invested in India. Such foreign investments are not limited to certain industries but spread across 61 sectors of the economy and cover 31 states of India,” he said, underscoring that more than US $3 billion have been invested in the aerospace sector alone.
After 2014, investments in the aerospace sector grew five times from what was invested being between 2000 and 2014, the PM said.
For its part, Airbus promised that the company will deliver at least one aircraft every week to India for the next 10 years. Highlighting the huge business potential of India, Airbus’s chief commercial officer and executive vice president Christian Scherer said the company is reimagining the way it does business in India.
Chairman of Tata Sons, N Chandrasekaran, described the moment as historic. “It embraces the Prime Minister’s vision of making India a truly Aatmanirbhar (self-reliant) country,” he said.
The PM will dedicate and lay foundation stones of development projects worth Rs 858 crore in Panchmahal during his visit to the district on Tuesday. He will inaugurate the administrative block of Shri Govind Guru University (GGU) in Godhra and lay foundation stones of GMERS Godhra Medical College and Hospital as well as Kaushalya — The Skill University on which Rs 522 crore and Rs 164 crore will be spent.



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