‘It won’t take much time for Boeing to make planes in India’: PM Modi in Bengaluru

India will not have to wait too long for Boeing aircraft designed and manufactured in the subcontinent, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said at the inauguration of the aircraft maker’s engineering center in Bengaluru on Friday.

At the event, which was also attended by senior Boeing officials including Chief Operating Officer Stephanie Pope, Modi stressed the need to create an aircraft manufacturing ecosystem in India.

“Given that India has so much potential, we need to rapidly build an aircraft manufacturing ecosystem in the country,” Modi said.

The company’s largest facility outside the United States, the Boeing India Engineering and Technology Center (BIETC) in the capital of the southern Indian state of Karnataka, will be dedicated to research and development.

Although the site spans 43 acres, the business said it has invested $200 million in it; However, it did not disclose how many people would be employed at the facility. Across all its centers, Boeing now employs more than 6,000 employees in India.

Boeing has seen a surge in interest for its jets in India, currently the world’s fastest growing aviation market, where demand for travel exceeds the supply of planes.

On Thursday, the aircraft maker received orders for 150 737 MAX narrowbody jets from India’s youngest carrier Akasa Air.

In an exclusive interview with the news agency last year, India’s civil aviation minister, Jyotiraditya Scindia, had said that now is the time for Boeing and rival Airbus to consider setting up jetliner assembly in the country.

Boeing has tied up with India’s Tata Group to produce AH-64 Apache helicopter fuselages and 737 aircraft vertical fin structures.

(With inputs from Reuters)