Govt. soon to Introduce New Legislation for Consutruction Equipments: Secretary, Department of Heavy Industries

Construction Equipment Manufacturing (CEM) legislation to come soon stated Girish Shankar, Secretary, Department of Heavy Industry, the bill will concern regulations for construction equipment which are not wheeled and use of spurious parts.

The Industry has to gear up for better quality and adoption of right technology. The government is setting up the experience centre for advanced manufacturing as 4.0 industrial revolutions is already there, said Mr. Shankar while addressing an ASSOCHAM Conference on ‘Construction Equipment’ here at New Delhi.

“Industry has conveyed to us the problems in leasing, particularly that of multiple taxation”. We assure that our department will take up your case with the Finance Ministry, said Mr. Shankar.

India has emerged as one of the most attractive destinations for leading global investors with over 7% real GDP growth. The government is laying emphasis to achieve double digit growth, by following proactive, holistic and integrated approach, said Mr. Shankar.

He further said, Construction sector has an important place in the Indian economy. It is the second largest contributor to economic activity accounting for about 8% of GDP. It accounts for the second highest inflow of FDI after the service sector. It generates the highest level of direct and indirect jobs employing about 40 million people and creating 2.7 new jobs indirectly for every Rs 1.00 lakh invested. The sector has major forward (infrastructure, real estate, manufacturing) and backward (steel, cement etc) linkages, implying a high multiplier effect on economic growth, almost two times.

The demand for construction services is expected to rise manifolds due to several factors like massive expansion of the infrastructure sector, industrialisation, urbanisation rise in disposable incomes and various government, added Mr. Shankar. In the next three years we are going to invest around 1 trillion US$ in infrastructure sector.

“We have planned to build 50 million houses by 2022. In addition, we are developing smart cities and mega industrial corridors. We are also modernising our railway systems including signals, engines and railway stations.  We are planning metro rail in 50 cities and high speed trains in various corridors”.

Similarly, we have planned to construct on an average 15 km of National Highways every day. We are putting up new ports and modernising the old ones through and ambitious plan called ‘Sagarmala’.

The focus is on upgrading the existing airports and putting up regional airport to enhance connectivity to places of economic and tourist importance.

“My department has also been active in reforming policies leading to creating better eco-system. We have released our first ever National policy for capital goods sector with a clear objective of trebling manufacturing base to Rs. 75,000 crores by 2025 and raising direct and indirect employment from the current 8.4 to 30 million.

The policy also aims to facilitate improvement in technology depth across sub- sectors, increase skill availability, ensure mandatory standards and promote growth and capacity building of MSMEs.

This policy document has tried to identify and address issues relating to all sectors. For construction equipment industry, major bottleneck identified are to expand capacity, need for quality checks requiring regulations to stop usage of spurious spare parts, complex taxation structure, unfriendly tax clearance mechanism and issues with the skill development, said the secretary .

To make essential infrastructure facilities of Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs) available to Infrastructure Equipment Skill Council (IESC) certified Training partners in a phased manner.

We need to continue to focus on the existing sstong government and industry partnership which will help to ensure bridging the technological gaps that exist and further create a roadmap for a robust growth of the construction equipment and machinery sector in India.