Raksha Mantri Nirmala Sitharaman launched a series of projects as a part of the Tamil Nadu Defence Industrial Corridor in Tiruchirppalli on January 20, 2019.
- Ms Sitharaman stated that development of these corridors will not only help in accelerated growth and regional industry agglomeration, but will also facilitate a well-planned and efficient industrial base which will lead to increased defence production in the country and the region.
- This will also help the industry to integrate with the global supply chain of Defence manufacturing.
- The Tamil Nadu Defence Industrial Corridor will include Chennai, Hosur, Salem and Coimbatore, Tiruchirappalli as the nodes.
- The corridor is expected to be a specialised facility of aero component manufacturing. Ordnance Factory Board has announced 2305 crore rupees investment in the corridor.
- Defence Ministry said that Tiruchirappalli offers perfect ecosystem for defence manufacturing as major public sector companies like BHEL, Heavy Alloy Penetrator Project,Ordnance Factory and Railway workshops function in the region.
- This will be the country’s second defence industrial corridor after the first one was launched in Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh August 2018.
- Defence Minister also launched Coimbatore District Small Industries Association, CODISSIA, Defence Innovation Hub through Video conference from Trichy.
About Defence Corridor?
- When the ‘Make in India’ initiative was launched by the Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi in September 2014 to transform India into a global design and manufacturing hub, Defence Manufacturing was identified as one of the 25 key sectors. The announcement of setting up of two corridors – one in Tamil Nadu and the other in UP- exclusively for defence manufacturing in 2018-19 budget, was a logical continuum to this policy of the Government.
- Objective of these corridors are for focussed action at a localised level and develop specialised zones dedicated to various facets of defence production.
- For the corridor in UP, six nodal points have been identified, viz. Agra, Aligarh, Lucknow, Kanpur, Chitrakoot and Jhansi.
- The Tamil Nadu Defence Corridor, also called the Tamil Nadu Defence Production Quad as the nodal cities form a quadrilateral, include Chennai, Hosur, Salem and Coimbatore, Tiruchirappalli as nodes. These nodal cities have existing defence ecosystem in the form of OFBs, vendors working with Defence PSUs, and other allied industries. The Tamil Nadu Defence Corridor aims to bolster interaction between all industry players in order to create long-term synergy and eventual development of the area into a Defence Production powerhouse.
