Government needs to bring in stimulus packages, corporate incentives, says Apollo Tyres

Amid a lockdown in over 75 districts till March 31 and rising coronavirus cases in India, many original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) have shut down their production. Apollo Tyres has also shuts 3 out of its 4 plants.

Throwing more light on this development, Neeraj Kanwar, VC and MD of Apollo Tyres said, “We all are living in very uncertain and challenging time. Most of our plants are progressively shutting down. Both our Europe plants in Hungary and in Holland – are progressively shutting down. In India, most of our plants are  going towards the same shut down process."

"The key area for us is the safety and the health of our employees given that we all are part of one family, we are trying to fight this battle and try and be safe at our homes and at our work places,” he added.

“Apollo has been very proactively taking steps as soon as the virus hit the world. As we are based out of Europe, we took very proactive steps within the organization to start closing offices and to look after the safety of our people,” he said in an interview with CNBC-TV18.

“Previous to the virus, we all knew that the auto industry has been going through a very challenging time. We have been taking it up with the government to bring in some stimulus packages, some incentives into the auto segment. I am hoping that this will be seen positively by the government and start bringing in corporate incentives and also bring in liquidity into the capital markets. That is really required and request the government to please have a look at this,” he further mentioned.