India targets Global Leadership in Auto Industry, declares Nitin Gadkari

India’s potential to emerge as a global leader in the automobile sector. Speaking at the Spain-India Business Summit in Mumbai, he shared his vision to elevate India to the world’s top automotive hub within the next decade. The size of our automobile industry is 22 lakh crores. The size of China’s automobile industry is 44 lakh crores, and the U.S. stands at 78 lakh crores. Now, our aim is to make India’s automobile industry number one in the world within 10 years,” Gadkari stated.

While India’s production costs remain highly competitive, Gadkari noted that high logistics costs continue to be a challenge. However, with the country’s expanding infrastructure, including improved roads and ports, these costs are gradually decreasing, bolstering India’s ability to compete on a global scale.

“USA and European countries, it is 12%. And in the Indian scenario, it goes up to 14 to 16%. So, this is the first time we have decided to reduce this cost. We now have a lot of express highways, 36 green access control express highways. Our NHI is triple-A rating,” Gadkari added.

In discussing India’s strides in sustainable technology, Gadkari spoke about innovative water and waste management initiatives. Nitin Gadkari also highlighted one of India’s significant economic challenges: the country’s dependence on fossil fuel imports, which amount to 22 lakh crores. He emphasized that India is addressing this issue by promoting electric mobility and alternative fuels.

“It is one of the important economic challenges to our country that we have the import of fossil fuel of 22 lakh crores. We have got electric cars, electric buses, electric scooters, electric auto rickshaws, and now electric trucks are ready, along with electric tractors,” Gadkari stated. “So we are making alternative fuel and biofuel,” he added, underscoring India’s commitment to sustainable and cost-effective energy solutions for the future.

Gadkari said, “As a success story, we have already a global alliance in G20 and a lot of new technology has already been invented. So we are making ethanol from corn, sugarcane juice, molasses, B molasses, C molasses and food grain.”

He further added, “And that is the reason that by making this alternative and biofuel, I am confident that we will reduce the cost of fuel. By improving express highways, our target is that within two years, our logistics costs will drop to 9%, bringing it into single digits. This will make the economic viability 100% and lead to a substantial increase in growth.”