Large scale exports key to make India a global electronics hub: Min

NEW DELHI: Although the electronics sector is the first recipient of production-linked incentive (PLI) schemes, exporting at scale to the global market and increasing the share of total domestic value addition (DVA) cannot be simultaneously achieved without a competitive domestic ecosystem of components and suppliers, Minister of State for IT and Electronics, Rajeev Chandrasekhar said here.

Achieving the scale of exports and production will not only help the sector to grow domestically, but also meet the goal of the government’s ‘Make in India for the World’ programme and achieve the target of a trillion-dollar digital economy by 2025-26, the minister said at an event on Monday.

In the last few decades, the electronics trade has been dominated by China, but the world has entered a new era in the post-Covid phase, and there is an immense opportunity for India to become that trusted partner to the world as a source of technology products and services.

“During the period between 2014 to 2020 (pre-COVID), electronics manufacturing grew almost 250 per cent in India. To further catalyse this momentum, Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched a series of PLI schemes with incentives of $20 billion that have created significant expansion of investments, units and jobs in the sector,” said Chandrasekhar.

India is today the world’s second largest manufacturer of mobile phones in the world.

The ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’ economic policies, with a focus on ‘local for global’ have set ambitious goals for electronics manufacturing of $300 bn, including exports of $120 billion by 2025-26, up from the current $75 billion.

“These are ambitious, but necessary targets, given the size of the opportunity and the competition for these opportunities from other countries,” the Minister said during the launch of a report by the India Council for Research on International Economic Relations, in collaboration with India Cellular and Electronics Association, in the capital.

India’s electronic exports have nearly tripled between 2015 and 2022 - from $5.8 billion to $16 billion.