India focused on US$300bn electronics production by 2026
Looking to export US$120bn worth electronics in four years
Pic - Pexels from Pixabay
Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Minister of State for Electronics & Information Technology and Skill Development & Entrepreneurship, said today that India has already framed a strategy that will enable the country to produce electronics goods worth US$300bn with exports of US$120bn by 2026.
The focus is on establishing value supply chains globally. Chandrasekhar said, “The Government is laser focused on achieving the target of 300 billion USD electronic production by 2026. And for this, we have always emphasised on strengthening our domestic manufacturing ecosystem to make India more resilient to supply-chain disruptions. Our aim is to emerge as a reliable and trusted partner in Global value chains.”
He highlighted that India was increasingly dependent not just on petroleum but also on electronics imports in 2014, with a majority of the imports from China. However, India is now a US$76bn electronics manufacturing economy with US$16bn exports (US$21-25bn exports next year).
The minister launched a report, “Globalise to Localise: Exporting at Scale and Deepening the Ecosystem are Vital to Higher Domestic Value Addition”, by India Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER), in collaboration with India Cellular and Electronics Association (ICEA).
Chandrasekhar said that post-COVID the value chains of electronics are undergoing deep tectonic irreversible changes. “It presents to India, the current momentum and opportunity which is explained by the US$120bn export target that India has for 2026,” he added.
He said that focusing on manufacturing is important to scale up exports, while exports will fuel production further in future.
Dr. Deepak Mishra, Director and CE of ICRIER and the lead author of the report, said, “Our study finds that China and Vietnam have adopted the mantra of ‘first globalise, then localize’, which means in the initial years they were determined to achieve global scale in exports, and then shifted their emphasis to greater use of local contents.”
Pankaj Mohindroo, Chairman of ICEA, said “We have resurrected this industry after near total collapse in 2014. As a first step, we used PMP to build a USD36bn mobile industry. We are now pushing for global exports via PLI and a total production of USD300bn. With exports as our key focus, we are working on policies that will increase domestic value addition over the next few years. The world is looking to us for delivering on our potential!”
According to ICEA, India’s electronics exports crossed US$16bn in FY2021-22. Electronics as a sector leaped to the sixth largest export from India this year. Mobile phones constitute the single largest component of electronics exports from India. They are expected to contribute nearly 50% of total electronics exports by next year.
Send your comments to feedback@mddtimes.com
