Need govt's help to adopt euro 6 norms: Ashok Leyland

Below is the verbatim transcript of the interview..Q: What is part of your wishlist as far as the Budget this year is concerned?A: I have equally said there is something called a national calamity contingency duty (NCCD), it is my pet peeve. 1 percent or 0.5 percent, honestly, I do not even know exactly how much it is but it is very low. I even suggested combine this with excise duty, but get rid of this. The reason I said get rid of it, the only two other industries that are charged with this is alcohol and tobacco. I do not want to be clubbed in the same group as somebody else like that.Q: It all boils down to an image issue at the end of the day and that is something that you really want to work on today? A: yes, absolutely. I mean, today in India, like I said, the auto industry India has adopted the fastest, the phase-III policy is the fastest policy anywhere in the world. We get no credit for that, nor are we seeking credit. But, set up a roadmap along with the government and say this is when you want things, we will get it done. But for that, certain things are required. If you want Euro-VI soon, fine we will do. If 2020 is when you want Euro-VI, you have to have Euro-VI in 2019. You ask my personal opinion, I doubt it will be available, but we are going ahead and getting our vehicles ready for Euro-VI. Q: You are ticking all the boxes off? A: Yes, we will be ready. You want air-bags on the vehicles, we will get air-bags on the vehicles. That is not a problem. While you are exporting BS-VI vehicles, that is not correct. That is petrol vehicle, not diesel. Q: Also moving forward from the budget itself, in terms of what the markets are likely to look like in 2016, are we likely to see recovery from the tough times that we witnessed last year? A: The truck industry is seeing a great revival. But what people forget is three years ago or four years ago, it was 3,50,000 and it fell for 25 percent two years in a row. It came down to 2,00,000. So, we have a base effect. From 2,00,000 it has come back to 2,30,000-2,80,000 we hope this year, it will required at least one or two more years of this kind of growth to reach the previous highs. Plus on top of it, we are going to build a lot more roads, we are going to build a lot more in terms of infrastructure. Q: That is something you might want in the Budget as well in terms of infrastructure support. A: Who does not want better infrastructure? It is safer, it brings better economy, it brings better connectivity, we have been talking about infrastructure for a long period of time, for our country, for the people that live in our country, the kilometres of road is abysmally low. We need to do a lot more a lot faster.

Q: I want to also redirect the attention to the whole emission debate that has been on for a long time now. The last few months have seen courts come down heavily on several aspects of commercial vehicles in terms fo the courts directing you to find parking space before someone buys a commercial vehicle restricting movement of commercial vehicle to the national capital for instance. Does the formulation of a standard environmental policy then eliminate the kind of role courts will have to play in imposing and telling you what to do which of course is a major area of concern?

A: There is only one request that I have whether it is NGOs, NGTs, courts or government or whoever we have everybody and his brother dictating policies to the auto industries. Give us one automotive board, let them discuss with all the constituents and come up with a road map. We will honour it, we will meet that but don't keep changing the goal post every time somebody else raises a question. Auto industry is a long gestation investment. Thousands of crores of investments will have to go. In fact one of the things I requested the finance ministry this time is if we are going to spend a substantial amount of money in the next three years in automation and development of new technology for Euro-VI hopefully there can be some benefit that can be given for R&D also.

Q: Is R&D then a big part of your liability?

A: Huge chunk, 2-3 percent of the total sales go into R&D. More than 10 percent of the R&D in this country is done by the auto industry and hence anything that the government can do to provide that little bit of reprieve is going to be helpful.