The government has been actively pushing the agenda for promoting the animation, VFX, comics and gaming (AVCG) industry of the country. The latest in its efforts to boost the sector is coming from the Information & Broadcasting Ministry minister of state Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore.
The government today said that around Rs 780 crore has been spent or committed with respect to advertisements and publicity by the Directorate of Advertising and Visual Publicity (DAVP) in six months till March, 2015.
Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting, Rajyavardhan Rathore, shared the above information in Rajya Sabha through a written reply. The minister said that in this period, the amount of money spent by DAVP on print media was around Rs 260 crore while that on audio-visual publicity was around Rs 451 crore.
DAVP also committed approximately Rs 69 crore for outdoor publicity with the total amount thus spent under these heads standing at Rs 780 crore and 60 lakh in six months till March of this year.
Meanwhile, in response to another question related to the setting up of a National Centre of Excellence for Animation, Gaming and Visual Effects, Rathore said that the government is in holding discussions with all stakeholders on the various aspects of the project, including funding, location, number of courses and seats.
In Budget 2015, finance minister Arun Jaitley had stated that ‘for the northeast states, there will be a film, animation and gaming centre in the state of Arunachal Pradesh and an apprenticeship for women in Uttarakhand and Haryana.’
And fairly recently at FICCI FRAMES 2015, the state of Maharashtra showed keen interest in enabling the AVGC sector to create a lot more work locally and benefit from proposed tax exemptions from the entertainment tax and the poster boy of the VFX industry, Namit Malhotra also spoke from the heart as he said that India is the only destination where Hollywood studios can get optimum output for the right price.
With the setting-up of the National Centre of Excellence there will certainly be more talent coming to this sector and they can get the right education for nurturing them to be the thought leaders of a bright tomorrow.
