In this year’s Budget, about Rs 2 lakh crore was earmarked for the PLI (production-linked incentive) scheme for the next five years and “there is an expectation that the scheme would result in increasing the production by about USD 520 billion in the next five years”, Modi said in a virtual meet with manufacturing industry leaders on ‘PLI – Linking India To Global Value Chains’ on Friday.
India’s apex handset body ICEA said the electronics industry could be the largest contributing to the PM’s vision of achieving $5 trillion exports and added that government’s investments must not be treated as subsidies by companies but a tool to become globally competitive.
“ICEA has submitted their recommendations to Meity which speaks for the mobile and electronics industry, the disabilities, what defines success and key policy interventions by the Government of India,” Pankaj Mohindroo, chairman, ICEA said in a statement.
“It is imperative to offset the disabilities vis- à -vis other countries and encourage Global Value Chains (GVC’s) and domestic industry players to set-up manufacturing facilities in India. We need to build policies to compete with countries and not companies”, he said.
The PLI scheme for handsets which went live in August 2020 entails an investment of Rs 11,000 crore from global and domestic companies like Foxconn, Wistron, Pegatron, Samsung, Lava, Dixon and Micromax to manufacture mobile phones worth Rs 10.5 lakh crore over the next five years.
Mobile phones continue to be the largest exported category among electronics with 35% share. According to the National Policy on Electronics (NPE) 2019, handsets will contribute 48% or $190 billion of production in the next five years.
“We are confident that on the basis of such forward-looking policy interventions, India should be able to focus its efforts to capture the investment opportunities originating from various global as well as domestic stakeholders,” Mohindroo said.
