Mumbai, Feb 7 (KNN) The Maharashtra government on Tuesday approved a defence and aerospace production policy which offers incentives to PSUs to facilitate establishment of anchor units which in turn would develop market and ecosystem for the MSMEs.

The Defence and Aerospace Policy aims to attract USD 2 billion investment in five years and create 1 lakh jobs.

Under the policy, the state government will also create a corpus of Rs 1,000 crore to provide initial working capital to the small and medium enterprises in defence and aerospace.

The corpus of Rs1,000 crore would be managed by a professional fund manager and used to provide working capital for the MSMEs in this sector, according to a press release issued by the chief minister’s office.

The government also has plans to establish ‘defence hubs’ at Pune, Nagpur, Ahmednagar, Nashik and Aurangabad.

The policy also talks of reimbursement of stamp duty, establishment of exclusive industrial townships and rationalisation of industrial laws.

The release said the state plans to contribute substantially to the union government’s target to reduce India’s dependence on defence and aerospace imports from the current 70% to 30%. The policy will offer financial concessions and incentives to develop indigenous technologies in this sector and establish “anchor units” to build an ecosystem, the release says. (KNN Bureau)