“Steel price cooling off measures to help entire manufacturing sector,” SIAM president hails Budget 2022

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday in her Union Budget 2022 speech announced a couple of measures to boost the Indian auto industry. These include steps like announcing a new battery swap policy to encourage electric vehicle adoption, opening up defence R&D to private players for auto component development.

Kenichi Ayukawa, President, SIAM, hailing the budget, said “SIAM welcomes a growth-oriented budget focused on Building Long Term Strength using Investment as the growth lever while maintaining policy stability and inclusivity. The 35% increased Capex outlay, major infrastructure projects like 25,000 km road construction, 100 Cargo terminals, Project GatiShakti, 5G network, optic fibre cable laying and the recent PLI schemes are major positives. Leveraging Biomass and support to ethanol blending for both environment and economy gains could unlock the power of India’s rural economy. Steel price cooling off measures will help the entire manufacturing sector. Impetus to charging infrastructure and energy storage systems and government support in R&D for clean energy, green mobility and semiconductors will help the auto sector. We will work with the government for policy on green mobility, special mobility zones and battery swapping. We welcome the message on Ease of Doing Business and look forward to this being observed in spirit by all department”.