Article Posted on : - Jun 04, 2010

BANGALORE (PTI): There is lot of potential in the aerospace sector, with the space service market likely to grow to USD 7-9 billion by 2015, a top official of Antrix Corporation has said.

However, the domestic market is currently worth USD 2-3 billion, said K R Sridhara Murthy, the Managing Director of Antrix Corporation, which is the commercial arm of the Indian Space Research.

"We are looking at investments from groups like EADS (Netherlands). We want to double the production capacity of satellites to meet the demand of the domestic and international market," he said, speaking on "Opportunities in Aerospace Sector" at the Global Investors' Meet here Thursday.

"There is tremendous potential in the aerospace sector and it is likely to grow to USD 7-9 billion by 2015," he said.

Murthy said there were a number of opportunities in the aerospace sector in areas including production of satellite components and equipment, navigation hardware and value-added services and ground systems relating to space communication.

"A conducive policy and incentives are needed to exploit these (opportunities)," Murthy said.

India is a leader in imaging from space and also in the application of imagery down to earth. The future demand will be for eight-ten satellites annually, he said.

Highlighting ISRO's achievements with 54 satellite missions, 31 launches and 22 foreign satellites launched, he said Karnataka was a hub for global aerospace knowledge and skill needs.

Hindustan Aeronautics Limited Chairman Ashok Nayak said, "The aerospace industry must focus on niche areas and augmentation of development and production of aircraft and ecosystem, as this is where we are sourcing from abroad to a great extent."

"We have been importing military hardware to the tune of USD 28 million since 2000 and India is expected to spend about USD 35 billion over the next 20 years to modernise military aviation," he said.

HAL has JVs with ten leading firms in the world. The latest one is with Rolls-Royce Group for manufacture of civil aero engine components, Nayak said.