Ludhiana: Suffering huge losses due to coronavirus, city businessmen are now demanding that government opens new research and development institutes in the city and revamp the existing ones, so that they can develop new products and techniques and bring down the cost of their existing products. According to businessmen, given the current situation, this is the only hope for them.
According to Gurmit Singh Kular, president of Federation of Industrial and Commercial Organisations (FICO), “Due to coronavirus Ludhiana’s industry has suffered huge losses and there is uncertainty over the future of the business. There is an urgent need of cost cutting and technological advancement, which is only possible if there are research and development institutes or technology and incubation centres. The existing centres here are working on the old principles, whereas there has been huge technological advancement. Industry of Ludhiana desperately needs to update their technology in order to compete in international market and develop new products for domestic use. In addition to this there is also a need of centres which could help us in technology transfer as there are many products of steel which has been replaced with plastic but till now such changes have not been possible to be adopted in Ludhiana industry.”
Kular also added, “We have started approaching central government officials to put forward our demand for a state of the art technology centre for the city. Very soon we are going to meet Union MSME minister and request for his intervention in this matter as well.”
Manjinder Singh Sachdeva, general secretary of United Cycle and Parts Manufacturers Association, said, “Research and development institutes and technology transfer are the need of the hour for Ludhiana’s industry. But at the same time the high import duty and the custom duty on import of machinery too is a big cause of concern for us and it should be abolished. We believe that acquiring the technology from abroad for manufacturing a product is more beneficial for the country’s economy, rather than importing a product. Also to realise the Make in India and Atam Nirbhar Bharat vision of our PM, the duties should be exempted for import of machinery.”
Rajeev Jain, general secretary of FICO, said, “Decades back Ludhiana was once amongst the most advanced manufacturing hubs in India with all latest techonologies and machinery. But over the passage of time the R&D centres in Ludhiana could not upgrade themselves in accordance with the changing technology and processes and as a result we could not actually benefit from these centres. So right now is the high time when industry of Ludhiana needs technological advancement. ”
Source:-timesofindia.indiatimes.com