Nitin Gadkari: Indian Auto Industry to Be Number One in Five Years

Union Minister Nitin Gadkari said here on Tuesday that DS will create a global leader in the automobile industry in five years' time. Another ambitious target set by the ministry is to cut logistics costs in India to 9 by 2015. Speaking at the Amazon Smbhav Summit, the minister for road transport and highways said that while he was in office, the industry expanded from Rs 7 lakh crore to Rs 22 lakh crore.

In the context, the first is USA-Rs 78 lakh crore, the second in China-Rs 47 lakh crore, and for India, Rs 22 lakh crore. "I am confident that within five years, we want to make the Indian automobile industry number one in the world," added Gadkari.

Minister Gadkari explained that world-class automobile brands coming into India would mean earning international marks; this also meant moving to a world class from a national. He also elaborated on the goal of the ministry to bring logistics costs in India to a single-digit figure in two years.

"The logistic cost in India is 16 per cent and in China it is 8 per cent, in USA and European countries, it is 12 per cent. The government has decided to reduce the logistic costs...in my ministry, we have the target that within 2 years, we will take this logistic cost to 9 per cent," he said.

Gadkari emphasized several projects aimed at significantly reducing travel times between major cities. The Delhi-Dehradun journey is actually nine hours currently, and by January 2025, this time will reduce to just two hours. The other route along which Delhi-Mumbai and Chennai-Bengaluru are expected to witness a substantial reduction in time. He also emphasized on alternative fuels and biofuels, and their ability to create huge fuel cost savings when proposed as in case of bio-ethanol use in vehicles, and would also make pollution shrink.

Gadkari also outlined plans to transform organic waste into hydrogen fuel and other valuable materials using advanced recycling technologies. He noted that Delhi produces a significant amount of municipal waste, but only 80 lakh tons of it is currently being utilized.

"Our idea is to make hydrogen from the organic waste. By segregating the waste, we can get petrol, plastic, metals and glass. The recycling of all these materials available is possible. And another technology is by which we can use this waste to get green hydrogen," he said.