Ravi Shankar Prasad asks CEO’s of electronics, Mobile corps to step up investment and manufacturing in India

The Government on Monday exhorted captains of electronics and the mobile industry to step up investments as well as manufacturing in India and asserted that fundamentals of the economy remain strong despite global turbulence.

Addressing CEO and heads of leading electronics and mobile companies like Apple, Dell, Oppo and Samsung among other others, IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad made an aggressive pitch positioning India as global hub for manufacturing, and urged the players to look at India “with greater vigour, and more commitment”.

He asked them to step up investments not only in mobile and automotive electronics segment but also strategic, defense and medical electronics, and robotics.

“In spite of all the turbulence we are witnessing globally, India’s fundamentals of economy is strong, be it…Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) or foreign reserves… all point toward robustness of our economy,” Prasad said.

Prasad cited the Government’s pro-growth, pro-investment policies and the sheer strength of India’s market, talent pool, and digital profile to argue that the country’s aspirations for electronics manufacturing and exports are not “far fetched”.

India has set its sight on creating a USD 400 billion (around Rs 28.43 lakh crore) electronic manufacturing ecosystem by 2025, and notified a new policy to galvanise manufacturing activities.

Terming 5G as the new frontier for growth, Prasad said the Government is keen to see that India emerges as a big hub for 5G knowledge economy, patent creation, and Research and Development activities.

“India must emerge as a big leader in strategic electronics. India is a big market for solar, automotive and consumer electronics, and I would like to hear from you on how to take this forward. India also has a huge potential for medical electronics,” Prasad said assuring the industry of the Government’s full support.

Prasad instructed his Ministry to set up an institutionalised mechanism in form of a taskforce that would regularly interact with the industry, take their suggestions and address concerns.

The Minister is holding discussions with leading electronics and mobile firms, to persuade them to step-up manufacturing in India and leverage the country for global exports.

The Minister’s day-long brainstorming session with CEOs comes at a time when India is trying to pitch itself as an international hub for electronics, and grab opportunities that have cropped-up in the backdrop of rising trade tensions between US and China, a global manufacturing powerhouse.

The closed-door meeting includes representatives from all major verticals of electronics sector such as mobile handsets, consumer electronics, strategic electronics, medical devices, electronics manufacturing services, components, telecom and LED lighting, among others.

But all eyes will be on leading global players like Apple, Samsung, and others to see the policy prescriptions suggested by them. Interestingly, India hopes to nudge the tech titans to deepen their investment commitments, attract supply chain and anciliary firms, and increase value addition here,.

Big names in the electronics and manufacturing industry including Vivo, Oppo, Qualcomm, Xiaomi, Dell, HP, Bosch, Cisco, Flextronics, Foxconn, Nokia, LG, Panasonic, Intel, Wistron, and Sterlite Technologies are scheduled to attend the meeting.

Over the last few years, there has been a visible ramp up of smartphone production in India, as new mobile factories mushroomed across the country to cater to the data-hungry smartphone users.

The size of mobile phone manufacturing was 29 crore units and Rs 1,70,000 crore in value terms during 2018-19. India now hopes to put the building blocks for the next trajectory of growth. It is also fine-tuning a fresh cluster scheme (bigger and better than the last one) that would woo anchor manufacturing units with supply chain ecosystem and ancillary firms.

Following Monday’s deliberation, various incentives and schemes in the pipeline, will be given finishing touches. These schemes are expected to be operationalised in the coming months.

The National Electronics Policy 2019 – cleared by the Cabinet earlier this year – plans to bolster mobile manufacturing in the country to 1 billion units worth USD 190 billion (about Rs 13 lakh crore) by 2025, of which 600 million units worth USD 110 billion (about Rs 7 lakh crore) will be exported.