FADA pitches for auto clusters in cities

The Federation of Automobile Dealers Associations (FADA), the apex body of automobile dealers in India, has made a strong pitch for creation of auto clusters in various cities.

Speaking at FADA’s 51^st Annual Session held on September 18, K V S Prakash Rao, president, FADA, said in their absence, it would be difficult to sustain growth expected in the next 10 years. Shrinking space for commercial and industrial activities and increasing congestion and pollution have not only made the cost of real estate prohibitive, but have also led State governments to come up with stringent land use laws. 3S automobile dealerships, encompassing sales, service and spares under one roof, can operate neither from commercial area nor industrial area. Therefore, the need for auto clusters.

Rao pitched for simplifying registration procedure and delegating the registration of new vehicles to the automobile dealerships in the Andhra Pradesh on the lines of schemes introduced by the governments of Delhi and Rajasthan. He hoped that the signing of MoU between Automotive Skills Development Council (ASDC) and AP State Skills Development Council (APSSDC) would give impetus to the skilling of the people in the state.

Kesineni Srinivas, MP, referring to the Auto Nagar in Vijayawada developed for workshop activities way back in 1960, assured that the Andhra Pradesh government would favourably consider the suggestion for creating an auto zone comprising sales and service activities.

Ganta Subba Rao, MD and CEO, Andhra Pradesh State Skills Development Corporation (APSSDC), said that APSSDC has been set up on a PPP model with the objective of skilling over 2 crore people in AP over next 10-15 years. With double-digit growth envisaged, Andhra Pradesh would need an incremental human resources requirement of approximately 10 million skilled workers between 2012 till 2022, across the high-priority and emerging sectors. The idea was to shape AP as the skilled-workforce and knowledge hub for the world. He said that a multi-pronged approach, including the setting up of 36 Centres of Excellence, would be adopted to achieve the goal.

Sunil Chaturvedi, CEO, ASDC said that AMP 2016-2026 envisages 3x growth in production volumes of vehicles and 5x growth in revenues in the next 10 years, which presents a gigantic challenge of skilling of huge manpower required by the auto sector. There are currently 2,000 training delivery centres accredited by ASDC, which need to be increased to 10,000 centres to meet the present demand of skilled manpower. He invited automobile dealers to become training centres of ASDC, which would not only increase skilled manpower availability for the auto sector, including automobile dealerships, but would also become an additional revenue stream for them.

ASDC and APSSDC signed and exchanged an MoU at the event, with the objective of giving fillip to the skilling of people in the State.