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India is mulling increasing the incentives offered to international production houses for filming in the country and also grant one-off perks for big-ticket films.
Last year, the government unveiled an incentive scheme for audio-visual co-production where the Indian co-producer can claim a cash reimbursement of up to 30 per cent on qualifying expenditure in India, subject to a maximum of Rs 2 crore.
Information and Broadcasting Secretary Apurva Chandra on Tuesday said the government is considering increasing the quantum of incentives as it realised that other countries are offering more attractive perks for filming.
"We will reveal the quantum of increase shortly, the proposal is under consultation within the government," Chandra said at the CII Summit FX4th Global AVGC and Immersive Media Summit here.
He said the government received six to seven applications from producers to film in the country under the incentive scheme but expressed displeasure that the initiative was not known to those in the animation and visual effects industry.
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Chandra said the government was also considering hosting a separate international animation film festival soon.
To encourage the animation sector, the government, as an initial effort, will have a segment dedicated to the fast-emerging sector at the International Film Festival of India in Goa, he said.
Chandra said animation, visual effects, gaming and comics (AVGC) formed 20 per cent of the media and entertainment sector in the country and was growing fast.
Film production markets such as the US, Canada and the UK offer programmes at the national level as well as state and provincial levels.
Emerging markets such as Middle East and Africa -- the UAE, Jordan, Morocco and South Africa -- have started deploying production incentives to jump-start local content development, given markets there are still nascent.
Chandra said the National Centre of Excellence for AVGC will be set up with larger participation from the private sector.
"The National Centre for Excellence will have CII-FICCI as stakeholders with 52 per cent stake and 48 per cent government stake," he said, adding that the centre will be developed on the lines of Invest India and was expected to operated as a catalyst to develop the sector and attract investments.
Atul Kumar Tiwari, Secretary, Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, said the government has made great inroads in creating skilled talent in the AVGC sector with around 55 universities in India now offering courses in animation and 38 in VFX.
Tiwari said India was focusing on developing future skills, and AVGC as an integral part of this strategy.
Also, as part of the National Education Policy-2020, the government is making efforts to integrate AVGC into school curriculum in order to identify and train talent from an early stage.
Asking the industry to create globally local content, Tiwari said that India has so much to offer to the world through its stories and we are moving in the right direction.
Biren Ghose, Chairman, CII National AVGC Committee, said that the sector has the potential to grow three times its current size in the next five years.
Ghose said that the AVGC sector was experiencing a number of trends including emergence of Generative AI, and was coming out of its dependence on TV commercials.
(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
