Chennai: The establishment of the defence corridor in Tamil Nadu aims at increasing India’s self reliance in the defence sector and also to create a minimum of one lakh jobs in Tamil Nadu. Besides it will propel TN into leadership position in defence production with a target of 30 % of nationwide defence manufacturing.
With the Centre on taking up the project, the Tamil Nadu Small and Tiny Industries Association (TANSTIA) in association with Bharat Electronics Ltd organised Defence corridor meeting here to obtain inputs to formulate a policy for establishing the defence corridor. “The Defence corridor meeting suggested consultant panel for preparing DPR should be constituted with experts from Defence, industries & academia from Tamil Nadu,” said C.K. Mohan, General Secretary, Tanstia.
Among the numerous suggestions that were put forth included setting up a Skill Development Centre in the proposed clusters and every cluster should have centralised testing facility, government contracts for Defence Procurement to be given only to organisation with certified personnel third party certification, creation of Defence manufacturing fund by MoD for Start-ups, import subsidy for capital goods, constitution of monitoring team, mandating strategic partners to out-source appropriate manufacturing requirements to MSMEs and setting-up Defence Export Promotion council were among the other suggestions.
A series of interactions have already been held at Hosur, Coimbatore and Salem with all the stake holders to obtain inputs on formulating a policy for establishing the defence corridor. Rajib Sen, Economic Advisor, Dept of Defence Production, Ministry of Defence, Dr. Rajendra Kumar, Principal Secretary - Industries Commissioner and Director of Industries and Commerce, Dharmendra Pratap Yadav, Principal Secretary, Dept of MSME, Lieutenant General Subrata Saha (Retd) Director General, Society of Indian Defence Manufacturers (SIDM) Commodore S Shekhar (Retd), Director, Centre for Advancement of Science, Technology, Law and Engineering (CASTLE) and R. Srinivasan, General Manager BEL, were among those who participated in the meeting.
