IANS | 05 Mar, 2024
India’s Space economy stands at a modest $8 billion, but the
government is targeting a five-fold increase in the country’s share of
the global space economy, Union Minister Jitendra Singh said on Tuesday.
“Our own projection is that by 2040 India’s space economy will
multiply manifold. But more interesting is that according to some
international observers, for example, the recent ADL (Arthur D Little)
Report mentions that we could have the potential of $100 billion by
2040,” the minister said.
Addressing the gathering after launching
the Technical Centre of IN-SPACe here, the Union Minister of State
(independent charge) for Atomic Energy and Space said India’s quantum
leap in the space sector has only been possible after Prime Minister
Narendra Modi took the courageous decision to “unlock” this sector from
the “veil of secrecy”.
“Prime Minister Modi has broken taboos of the past by opening the space sector to public-private-participation,” he pointed out.
The
minister said: “Four to five years back, we had just one digit Startups
in the Space sector, today we have nearly 200 private Space Startups
after opening up of the sector while the earlier ones have even turned
entrepreneurs. There has been an investment of over Rs.1,000 crore by
private Space Startups in the current financial year from April to
December 2023.”
The Union Minister gave full credit to PM Modi for
enabling India’s space scientists to vindicate the dream of their
founding father Vikram Sarabhai by "unlocking" India’s space sector and
providing an enabling milieu in which India’s huge potential and talent
could find an outlet and prove itself to the rest of the world.
“Even
though talent was never lacking in the country, the missing link of an
enabling milieu was created under the leadership of PM Modi. With the
opening up of the Space sector, the common masses have been able to
witness the launch of the mega Space events like Chandrayaan-3 or
Aditya,” he added.
