Industrial park near Coimbatore to boost defence sector

To boost the defence sector, the Tamil Nadu government has identified 300 acres of land near here for setting up an industrial park to make components for the sector, State Industries Minister M C Sampath said on Friday.

As the Central government has announced a defence corridor in the city, the park would help increase the growth of the sector, Sampath told reporters on the sidelines of the inauguration of an aerospace tool design and manufacturing programme organised at Lakshmi Works Limited here.

Similarly, the government has identified 1,000 acres in Tirupur for starting a SIPCOT industrial park, as the park in Perundhurai is almost full, he said.

It was also proposed to have a western industrial corridor connecting Coimbatore-Karur-Namakkal-Salem, along with Chennai-Kanyakumari and Chennai-Bengaluru corridor, he said.

On opportunity in the aerospace industry, Sampath said 30 per cent of engineers in the sector across the world were hailing from Tamil Nadu and this should increase to 50 per cent.

Asked about the drastic decline in the sales of car, the Chennai being a car manufacturing hub, the minister said that he had learnt about this from the Centre and assessing the situation.

However, he said that he was not fully aware about the job loss due to this in the automotive industry.