Govt seeks nod to spend 3000-cr on various schemes

Heavy Industries Ministry plans to seek approvals to spend Rs 3,000 crore on various schemes to roll out the country's first-ever policy for the Capital Goods sector over the next six months.
"Within six months we plan to come up with schemes which will require financial interventions to the tune of Rs 3,000 crore.
"These will be related to deliverables given in the policy like export promotion scheme for capital goods, scheme for skill development, technology acquisition, among others," a senior official in Heavy Industries Ministry told PTI.
Union Heavy Industries Minister Anant Geete had also said recently that Rs 3,000 crore will be spent to roll out the Capital Goods Policy which the Heavy Industry Ministry plans to implement in the next six months.

"We will be proposing schemes and obtaining approvals going forward from the Finance Ministry," said the official.
The policy envisages increasing exports to 40 per cent of production, from the current 27 per cent, while increasing the share of domestic production in India's demand to 80 per cent from 60 per cent, potentially making India a net exporter of capital goods.

It 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.
Key policy recommendations include strengthening the existing scheme of the Department of Heavy Industries on enhancement of competitiveness of the capital goods sector by increasing budgetary allocation and increasing its scope to further boost global competitiveness.

It entails stepping up exports of India-made capital goods through a 'Heavy Industry Export & Market Development Assistance Scheme (HIEMDA)', launch of a Technology Development Fund, setting up new testing and certification facility and upgrading existing ones, making standards mandatory in order to reduce sub-standard machine imports, among others.