India emerging as the new ‘promised land’ for global aerospace manufacturing: Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia

Given its rapidly expanding market opportunity and a large talent pool, India has emerged as the new Promised Land for aerospace manufacturing and the world must take advantage by investing here, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Minister of Civil Aviation, has said.

“It is time to supplant aerospace manufacturing and integrated value chains within India. Many of you have set up assemblies, and many of you have set up sub-assemblies in different parts of the country. And there are multiple examples of that,” Scindia told delegates at the Business 20 International Aerospace Conference, jointly organised by the Ministry of Civil Aviation and industry chamber CII in Gwalior, Friday.

Noting that several global majors already had a strong presence in the country, Scindia said the French equipment maker Safran had set up an Indian supply chain for leap engines as well as a manufacturing cluster in Hyderabad, Boeing and GMR were building a passenger-to-freight conversion capability for aircraft and the fuselages of Boeing’s AH-54 Apache helicopter and tailfins for B737 as also the empennages for Lockheed Martin’s C-130 J Super Hercules were all being produced here.

He said India, therefore, held a tremendous investment potential for whoever was interested.

“[The country] has 17 per cent of the world’s population. Today, capital has become fungible [asset] to become a commodity. It is the human resource that is the biggest wealth in the world today. And my Bharat Mata (Mother India) has the maximum amount of it across the world. Therefore, the time has come for all of you to think afresh,” urged Scindia.

Elaborating on the country’s comparative and competitive advantages, he said it was fast emerging as the ‘Promised Land’ for companies looking to offset geopolitical, supply chain and logistics risks.

“That promised new land is the land on which your feet are supplanted this morning in Gwalior, in my country, India! And, therefore, the time [to invest] is today. I really do believe that there is a yawning gap today between supply and demand.”

He said that global manufacturers must not merely consider India as an option but proceed to invest here. To buttress his argument, he cited examples of several successful investments that were already in place. For instance, Boeing was today exporting $1 billion worth of assemblies and Airbus $850 million worth of sub-assemblies from India.

Similarly, Airbus and the Tata group had inked a joint venture for building the CASA C-295 aircraft for the Indian defence services.

In response to a question from Salil Gupte, President, Boeing India, on the facilitation available to potential investors, Scindia assured, “For whatever value chain you put together, wherever you face bottlenecks on your critical path, I am your go-to person. I will fight the good fight for all of you!”

Scindia also used to occasion to urge the industry to invest in his home state of Madhya Pradesh.

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