Today, the EMO World Tour made its second stop on the Indian subcontinent, this time in Chennai. With the participation of Christoph Miller Head of the trade fair department from the German Machine Tool Builders’ Association (on the right) and Andreas Gruchow, member of the board of Deutsche Messe AG. Both presented to the specialised public everything worth knowing about EMO Hannover, as the international innovation show of metal processing. Furthermore the Director of Chennai Metco C. Renganathan spoke to the media, not only as a local industry expert, but as an EMO exhibitor. He appreciates the EMO and is already looking forward to the coming September in Hanover.

India’s economy is targeting growth

India’s economy is currently growing faster than those of most other newly industrialising countries. The nation is benefiting from the low raw material prices, a comparatively low inflation rate, and booming direct investments from abroad. Consumer confidence has shown a corresponding improvement. The reduction in the base rate will put consumers in a spending mood for the future as well. Oxford Economics is predicting a rise of 7.2 per cent for Indian GDP in the ongoing year. There are, however, also possible risks for progress here, if, for example, the government’s commitment to reforms were to decline, or positive effects from the reforms were taking too long to arrive.

India’s manufacturing sector contributes only 15 per cent to the nation’s GDP. So it possesses an enormous potential for development, since other nations feature a significantly higher quota of industry. The Indian government aims to upsize the reserves with its “Make in India” campaign, and with the aid of capital investment from abroad. The goal is to ensure that industrial production output and capital investment in the major user sectors for machine tools grow more substantially compared to the preceding year in 2017 once again, by 5.4 and 7.5 per cent respectively. The principal focuses here are the mechanical and electrical engineering sectors, and the automotive industry with its component suppliers.

This produces a corresponding increase in machine tool consumption as well, which is predicted to grow by 8.4 per cent in 2017. This is the highest rate of all major industrialised and newly industrialising nations covered by Oxford Economics’ regular reports. The rising level of consumption is being reflected in the country’s machine tool imports, since India buys more than 70 per cent of the production technology it needs from foreign vendors, and with a volume of almost 1.1 billion euros ranks 9^th among the world’s biggest importers. The most important supplier nations in 2015 were Japan, Germany and China. Germany supplied 15 per cent of the imported machines.

Deliveries from Germany, however, fell by more than 30 per cent between 2012 and 2015. In 2015, they reached a temporary high, but in the first three quarters of 2016 they fell again, by 14 per cent. The principal categories involved were machining centres plus parts and accessories.

A renewed upturn in bilateral machine tool business is being signalled by orders from India. These almost doubled in the first nine months of 2016, thanks primarily to large-scale orders in the field of forging technology.

Photo: VDW