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Editorial
On a Roll
The bad news – the volume of sale of equipment has
dipped from last year’s roller coaster expansion ride
which contributed to volumes of 47 per cent.
And the good news – still, the CE market is set to
register a 14 per cent growth; in terms of volumes, 57,350
machines as against the previous year’s record volume
of 50, 366 machines; and the silver lining – over the
next four years the market will grow some 131 per cent on
2007 levels to 1, 16, 295 units by 2012, and the industry
is expected to replace Japan has the third largest equipment
market in the world.
Even though the severe credit squeeze due to inflation and
rising input cost, has temporally clouded the sky, given the
robust economic growth in the last few years, the government
expects to mobilise 20 per cent of the total infrastructure
investment of US $ 456 billion during the 11th Plan (2007-2012)
into this sector. While overall spending on national highways
is expected to grow by five per cent, investment in rural
roads is expected to grow by eight per cent. Even at a time
when there is a global credit crisis that is dragging the
global finance through a major churning, as per the industry
sources, the Planning Commission estimate of investments worth
billions for the various infrastructure sectors during the
11th Five Year Plan still holds, and as per its estimates,
the CE industry will reach $ 12 billion by 2015.
The compaction equipment industry registered impressive growth
over the last 5 years and the last year had been the best
with a growth of over 45 per cent compared to 2006 - 07. Even
though there is a temporary slackness, the projects announced,
the outlay in the 11th plan and the various state initiatives
point to a similar growth of over 30 to 35 per cent.
In developed markets, especially in US, intelligent compaction
(IC) is a new technique in construction market that uses an
instrumented compactor to control soil or asphalt compaction
in real time. This technology provides one of the first opportunities
to apply process control to civil construction. New technologies
such as compaction monitoring technology for determining real-time
compaction results with 100 percent test coverage are developed
to improve upon the traditional approaches of process control
and spot tests. In India too, with the advent of the massive
road projects there is perceptible shift towards quality of
projects and machinery used. Similarly the modes of construction
like PPP, BOT etc has brought about a shift towards end-specific
methods from method-specific construction, which in turn has
increased the quality of construction. There is also a gradual
shift towards higher capacity, especially in compaction equipment
like soil and asphalt compactors which assures greater density
and better quality.
Despite tectonic shifts in global finance, with the government
envisaging
a greater role of the private sector in infrastructure creation,
the future
looks bright.
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