According to people in the know, the Centre is considering a one-year extension of the Rs 25,938-crore production-linked incentives scheme for the automotive sector after none of the participating companies qualified for subsidies in the first year of the plan. Based on sources, the five-year plan, which went into effect in April 2022, may now be extended until March 2028, rather than the original deadline of March 2027.

A total of 95 companies have been accepted into the scheme, which aims to encourage local manufacturing of new technology products such as electric vehicles (EV) through subsidies. However, none of these companies submitted any claims for the first year of the scheme, which ended in March 2023, and thus there was no government disbursement.

According to sources, several participating companies then requested that the scheme be extended by a year. The government is currently considering such an extension, they added.

"As an industry, we request that the scheme be extended for another year." "Given that this is a new scheme, it is understandable that the government took a year to release some details," said Sudhir Mehta, chairman and managing director of Pinnacle Industries, one of the applicant companies under the scheme.