TN to come out with new auto policy

Likely to be finalised in three months

The Tamil Nadu government is planning to formulate an industry-specific sectoral policy for automobiles and components. The policy is likely to be finalised in the next three months, said deputy chief minister MK Stalin.

Speaking after inaugurating the manufacturing facility of Ford India’s small car Figo here on Friday, he said Chennai was emerging as one of the top ten global automobile manufacturing centres.

Six major car companies — Ford, Hyundai, BMW, Renault, Nissan and Mitsubishi — already have their operations here. Recently, Mahindra & Mahindra too decided to establish its new automobile plant in the city.

With this, Chennai will have an installed capacity of 1.2 million cars and about 350,000 commercial vehicles every year. In other words, it will have a capacity to produce three cars every minute and one commercial vehicle every 75 seconds.

The city has also become a major centre for the production of large earth moving vehicles with Komatsu, Caterpillar, Kobelco and Doosan setting up their manufacturing plants here.

“Tamil Nadu has the largest auto components industry base. The state accounts for over 32 per cent of India’s production capacity. This has enabled automobile manufacturers to operate on ‘just-in-time’ avoiding inventory costs,” he said.

Stating that the automobile industry acts as a major-sector for employment generation, he said if the mother automobile plant employed one direct labour, the vendors cumulatively employed eight workers.