The City would get an MSME Technical Centre within two to three years, as Tamil Nadu Government has allotted nearly 13
acres of land at Sulur on the outskirts, to create the facility, a top official in MSME ministry from Delhi said today.


MSMEs are crucial players in bringing about the transition from Internal Combustion Engine Vehicles (ICEV) to Electric Vehicles (EV) for which countries across the world are striving, Additional Development Commissioner, Ministry of
Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) D.Chanrasekhar said.


He was speaking at a seminar on “Pioneering a Clean and Just ICEV—EV Transition for MSMEs organized to accelerate a smooth and equitable transition of the city’s MSMEs in the automobile sector by World Resources Institute (WRI)
India, an environmental research organization.


The transition from ICEV to EV is inevitable and the vehicles run on fossil fuels like petrol and diesel would become obsolete in 10 years, Chandrasekhar said. 


The WRI initiative is first of its kind in India and it would be taken across the country, he said. The Central Government had launched the Phase I of the Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of Hybrid and Electric Vehiclthe e (FAME) scheme in April 2015 which lasted till 2019.


Though the Phase II of the FAME scheme was supposed to have ended by March 2022, it had been extended till March 2024, he pointed out. A high-level panel discussion shed light on the policy vision, technology and finance needed to make Coimbatore a model cluster for clean and smooth transition of auto MSMEs, currently preparing to shift from the traditional ICE supply chains towards the EV industry.