Open to foreign firms setting up space infrastructure in India: ISRO official

India’s new foreign direct investment (FDI) policy for the space sector could allow overseas companies to set up their own infrastructure in line with the government guidelines, a senior official said here on Wednesday.

“If someone wants to come over here to establish their own infrastructure in line with the central government policies, we are looking forward to such kind of implementation,” N Sudheer Kumar, Director, Capacity Building Programme Office (CBPO) on Space Opportunities, ISRO, said at the India-Singapore Technology Summit organised by Department of Science & Technology and Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).

He said different policies for the space sector were at consultation stage that include use of remote sensing data, space communication, human space policy, industry and technology transfer.

Kumar said the space transportation policy would also allow the industry to have its own launchers, launchpads, launching systems as well as satellites.

He said the industry, including overseas companies, can get in touch with IN-SPACe, the single-window agency to facilitate industry participation in the space sector.

Earlier, inaugurating the Summit, Science & Technology Minister Jitendra Singh noted that the ISRO had launched Singapore’s first indigenously built micro-satellite in 2011 and eight more during 2014-15.

“New dimensions are added to these ongoing Cooperation from time to time,” Singh said.

Addressing the Summit, Singaporean Minister for Transport and Minister-in-charge of Trade Relations S Iswaran flagged three key areas of future cooperation such as D-Tech using A-I for smart cities, clean-tech for carbon mitigating technologies in aviation and transport sectors, and joint projects on genome and bioinformatics research.

Singh said Singapore was India’s largest trade partner in ASEAN and a leading source of FDI. He said about 9000 Indian companies were registered in Singapore and more than 440 companies from Singapore were registered in India. Singaporean companies continue to participate in a number of smart cities, urban planning, logistics and infrastructure projects, including in preparing Master Plans for townships with several state governments, Singh said.