India needs to ramp up manufacturing of ventilator components: Amitabh Kant

New Delhi, June 11

Buoyed by the promise shown by domestic ventilator makers during the COVID-19 crisis, Niti Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant, on Thursday, exhorted manufacturers to further scale up the capacity to emerge as a global supplier of the device and related components.

Speaking at a virtual conference of ventilator manufacturers and start-ups to discuss pathways for supporting indigenous manufacturing of ventilators, Kant said local makers supplied 60,000 ventilators in three months.

The country, he said, now needed to ramp up manufacturing of ventilator components to capture the global market.

The Secretary of the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT), Guruprasad Mohapatra, said India, under the aegis of the ‘Make in India’ initiative, had the potential to become a leading hub for manufacturing ventilators which were affordable and portable. He, too, stressed on the need to initiate a drive to capture the expanding global market for ventilators.

Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) chairman Sathish Reddy said necessary freedom and handholding had spurred innovations for high-quality and cost-effective ventilator solutions in the last three months among the start-ups.

While, Bharat Electronics Ltd (BEL) chairman and managing director MV Gautam said the progress made by the ventilator sector in the last few months was an example of how a facilitative environment could scale up manufacturing through the ‘Make in India’ initiative. PTI