Government to support EV industry and offer consumer incentives: Amitabh Kant

The government of India, which is pursuing an ambitious plan of all-electric mobility by the year 2030, is now looking to become an enabler of green motoring.    

Speaking at the ‘International Conference on Electric Vehicles - Future Roadmap for India’ organised by Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM ), the country’s apex trade body, in New Delhi today, Amitabh Kant, CEO, NITI Aayog, said the government’s target to drive  towards electric vehicles would be through holistic development of the automobile and allied industry, without hampering the industry’s growth prospects. The automobile and component industry contributes 7.2 percent to India’s GDP, creates over 30 million jobs and exports almost 25 percent of its total manufacturing.

“Whatever we do, we must understand that the role of the 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 the NITI Aayog CEO.

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

“We will continue to support this movement in a very big way. We will continue to support all OEM 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 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 the automobile and auto component sector continues to play a very major and significant role in India’s GDP, job creation as well as exports,” said 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 added.

Addressing the concerns of the automobile industry, he said, “The change is inevitable 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 a centre for manufacturing, battery manufacturing for usage as well as for exports. It is possible to do this in India is because our per capita usage of cars is still very low,” concluded Kant.

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