The draft National Policy on Electronics 2018 which has undergone wide consultations so far will be finalised and taken up by the cabinet very soon. While announcing this today, IT Minister Shri Ravi Shankar Prasad said, the Government is pushing the country for $1 trillion digital economy. With the focus on export-oriented initiatives in electronics, the new policy will help making India a hub of electronics manufacturing to serve domestic and the global markets.
Speaking at the first ever Electronics Summit organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) in New Delhi, the minister said, ‘Production of hardware manufacturing has increased over 3 years. This shows that India is capable of producing globally competitive products. Medical electronics, defense electronics, and automotive are the three areas that are going to bring excitement in the electronics industry in the coming time.’
The government has placed electronics manufacturing on high priority with major focus on initiatives such as Digital India, Make in India and supportive FDI policies to bolster electronic manufacturing. The industry must now keep a mass movement approach, in terms of creating more human resources, while also moving from scaling up to skilling the industry, the minister added.
The minister also released the CII report “Electronics Manufacturing- A study covering select Countries’ Best Practices and Few Success Stories of Companies in India”
Speaking at the Electronics Summit, NITI Aayog Vice Chairman Dr Rajiv Kumar said that electronics is like a sunrise industry for the country. In next two decades we need to scale the growth to 25-30%. While value addition is important, we also need to scale up, for which export figures and ambitious targets are more important. ‘The industry must aspire to become USD 150 billion industry in the next five years.’
Adding further, he said, electronics is like the mother industry and not just a vertical. It must now set some time bound targets for the key sectors to scale up its ambitions.
Mr Ajay Sawhney, Secretary, Ministry of Electronics & IT mentioned how electronics is driven by software today. ‘Electronics industry must associate its strength not only with other verticals but with the new areas of opportunity like software.’
Highlighting three key issues for the sector Mr Chandrajit Banerjee, Director General of CII said, other than the needs for Standards and greater Research & Development, there is a need to develop a 10 years Electronics Roadmap for providing the necessary framework to the industry.