The week-long event during February 13-18, 2016 comprised exhibits from across the industry, connected conferences and signing of many MoUs for mutual collaborations in each group of displays. The environment was conducive for serious discussions amongst the participants to arrive at mutually acceptable cooperation agreements as could be seen 2,436 MOUs signed during course of the event, according to the Maharashtra Chief Minister and an investment commitment of Rs 15.2 lakh crore.

Earlier, Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the Make in India Week at the MMRDA grounds at the Bandra Kurla Complex in Mumbai. Prime Minister of Sweden, Finland, and Lithuania and Piotr Glinski, Deputy PM of Poland, were present at the inauguration while Devendra Fadnavis, Chief Minister, Maharashtra and other eminent dignitaries were also present at the inaugural function.

CE Conference
EQUIPMENT INDIA focused on the proceedings for Construction Equipment and Technology. The session was moderated by Ashwani Kumar, National Executive Committee Member; FICCI and Chief Executive - Power Development, Larsen & Toubro Ltd. Vishvajit Sahay, Joint Secretary, Department of Heavy Industry and Suhaan Mukerji, Partner PLR Chambers, opened the session by outlining the new legislations either initiated or proposed by the government, to address the major issues plaguing the construction equipment industry. Anand Sundaresan, President ICEMA and Vice Chairman & Managing Director Schwing Stetter India Pvt Ltd, spoke on the realities of the Indian construction equipment sector.

Suhaan Mukerji: ?Industry?s growth path at present is not very favourable. We suffered reversal of trends and the strategy has not been very favourable. Having said that, our honourable minster has released the policy on capital goods which envisages the road map for capital goods and a very distinct sub-sector under that is construction equipment and mining machinery. There have some issues bothering the industry like second hand imports; lack of requisite standards for the industry etc.

After much thought we have decided to draft a legislation for off-road equipment. At present CMVR covers equipment and vehicles on the road, it does not have any standards or regulations for off-road equipment and the draft regulation will go through the process of governance?.

Mukerji said, ?I would like to give a background as to how we have arrived at this presentation: CE industry had been approaching the ministry for a while to enabling them with decisive regulations and legislations for growth. Therefore, we have decided in forming an exclusive legislative and regulatory framework in order to bring in transparency, do?s and don?ts; create single point of contact in the entire industry.?

On the financial aspects, he said, ?Make in India goals are clear; major spurt in PPP; infrastructure growth; boom envisaged in financing and large number of people are going to be engaging in this business. CE industry contributes 8 per cent of GDP; second largest employer valued at 126 billion and proposed to reach one trillion by 2026 plus 100 per cent FDI in many fields.?

On the mining sector he commented, ?Recent shift from the perspective of allowing commercial mining is a tremendous opportunity and we have not reached the stage when there are enough shovels in the ground in our country. Equipment turnover in 2015 was three billion with a potential to grow to 22.7 billion by FY 2020 and in terms of units is 330,000 for the same period. The sector employs 25 lakh people directly and indirectly with a cumulative inflow of FDI 175 million.?

?The significant challenges are availability of skilled manpower; lack of basic knowledge of how to use the equipment; requirement of skilling the labour across the board; lack of coordination amongst all the stakeholders that regulate or at least touch up on regulating this sector; absence of accreditation norms in terms of productivity, emission norms etc; and absence of access to finance,? he said.

Highlighting the proposals, Mukerji said, ?Lead agency will work with stakeholders; issue regulations, rules will be made by the industry; amend the regulations as necessary without running to the parliament; Fulcrum will be an independent lead agency comprising of specialists using world wide bench marks and outcome focused no bureaucratic systems, backbone to enablers.? On skill related aspects, he elaborated, ?Licensing and certification system with skill grading etc including insurance centric, unified standards for the country, electronic based licensing on PPP; Declaration of conformity by manufacturers/suppliers with heavy penalties in case of default easy financing with accountability induced with forensics to trace defaulters.?

Anand Sundaresan: ?I would like to outline the opportunities which are available to the industry, in light of Make in India initiative. Industry size by end of fiscal 2016 is estimated at $3.2 billion (roughly Rs 20,000 crore) and 50,000 units. This is really 20,000 units less than the peak year sales of fiscal 2011. This is where we disagree with Mukerji who showed that the market will grow to 20 million machine but our figures do not show that. This involves, earthmoving, concreting, material handling, road building, mining and material processing equipment.?

He added, ?Currently, there are about 100 CE manufacturers in the country.
Earthmoving: 35-40 manufacturers - 8 are domestic, 2 joint ventures and balance subsidiaries of overseas companies; Material handling: 17-20 companies - 6 Indian, 1 JV and balance MNCs; Concrete equipment: 12-15 manufacturers - 8 domestic, 1 JV and 5-6 MNCs; Road construction: 10-12 players - 9 Indian and 3 MNCs; Material processing: four companies - one Indian and balance MNCs. About 50-60 per cent of CE manufactured in India are predominantly by overseas companies. ICEMA members? list shows that practically all the leading manufacturers of CE who are present India are either a joint venture or 100 per cent owned subsidiary or a licence partner or trading partners of overseas companies.?

On the industry trend, he said, ?I can assure that all CE manufacturers present in India are interested to produce everything in the country. Basic reason is that we have weathered all ups and downs in the industry. In my opinion it is not possible to manufacture everything in India. Many essential sub-assemblies and components required for CE are simply not manufactured in India like high capacity diesel engines in earthmoving equipment.?

?In hydraulics, pumps and motors are not manufactured in India, imported mostly from Europe, while in transmission except a couple of manufacturers, most are imported from Dana, Carraro or others. They are not even assembled in India. So even if we have opportunities to grow in business we will still need to depend on imports. In under carriage Indian production meets less than 5-10 per cent of the demand. In structurals, we are only doing the labour in India. The low cost steel like 2062 or ST 52 grade is available in India but special steel is imp?orted. Similarly for tippers, wear material like Hardox and fine grain steel are imported. Current Indian steel plants do not produce such steels. Hydraulic seamless cylinder tubes and seals are imported by Wipro and Tafe. Electronics PLCs imported. We recommend government to invite such manufacturers to India to set up shops here.

CE industry provides employment to one million operators. In manufacturing our industry average is Rs 50 lakh per person overall huge employment through construction, growth prospect 15 per cent in the next four years. ICEMA has promoted IESC for skill development with a mandate to skill around 20 million people in next 6-7 years. After a gap of four years, we have witnessed a growth in road sector from Q3 last year.

Looking at developed countries 50 per cent equipment is available on lease whereas in India this option is very difficult due to tax reasons like excise duty, VAT and on top service tax. If this can be rationalised with flexibility to the leasing companies, it will help as more equipment will be made available to the contractors.

North East India has unique problem areas. Firstly working season is only 4-5 months in a year. Secondly they want to speed up infrastructure development but the heavy equipment produced in India is not deployable in this area due to logistics reasons and they have to deploy smaller equipment. Going further, for the contracts awarded, the governments are unable or afford to buy the equipment. Therefore, recommend to the government to look at an equipment bank for the region which can cater to their demands on lease/rental basis, thereby minimising their investments in equipment.

Results from study made with our knowledge partner Feedback Ventures during EXCON 2015 indicates that on a pessimistic level this industry will grow at 7.5 per cent, realistically at 11.8 per cent and optimistically at 17 per cent. Hence, by 2020, the number of units will return to 2010 level or has a potential to grow to 100,000 units. On a personal note, it can be much more.

Our appeal to the government is to look at the industry minutely and bring in the required reforms like waiving anti-dumping duty on steels and sections not produced in India etc.

?Make In India is important for the entire world.?
-Jonas Nilsson, Head, Volvo Penta India
Rather than commercial and business, this is a commitment on a completely different level. Make in India is something that is important for the entire world, and it brings a lot of value for the industry. Every company has India on its strategic map and Make in India puts issues on the agenda for decisions. It is great that people from the industry and the government as well come together to address the issues.

Realising Make in India
There are different ways to realise the vision of Make in India and the most obvious one is manufacturing. The Volvo Group has three manufacturing plants in India, another three with its joint venture partners and one of them is the engine manufacturing facility where Volvo Group manufacture our modern 5 and 8 litre engines. In the Penta version, so far we are manufacturing the base engines in India. Equally important is that we source components for our global manufacturing locations from India.

Yet another way to contribute is in design. Volvo Group has employed a large number of engineers in our Bengaluru facility, which is the third largest design centre in the globe with the global design responsibility for some of the product lines in the Volvo group.

Finally and not least important, we work closely with our OEM customers to make their products more competitive in the export market. So we have enabled our OEM customers compete on the global market.

The government is more focused on the emission norms and we see this as an opportunity for us to evolve in the engine business. It is the only sustainable way to move forward. I think this is an opportunity for India as well, because there is such a vast amount of skills in India when it comes to engine design, component design and manufacturing. More harmonised emission norms would only bring the possibility for Indian manufacturers to compete on a global platform.

Opportunities
Volvo Penta is active in off-road engine segment, power generation, and marine applications. We see a large opportunity in infrastructure development such as roads and highways and inland water transport where our engines will find applications in a large way. We are also serving the Navy and Coast Guard with engines for marine applications.

Our engines are also used in underground mining applications through our OEM partners. For example, some of the Sandvik mining equipment are powered by Volvo Penta engines. This is a statement for the quality standard of our products on how they operate in very demanding conditions underground.