The government recently announced that it has extended ‘Modified Special Incentive Package Scheme’ (M-SIPS) by five years and also expanded the scope of the programme to cover 15 new product categories. This decision has been viewed positively by the Indian electronics manufacturing industry. The announcement was made during a meeting of the cabinet headed by PM Modi to promote ‘Make In India’ and ‘Digital India’ initiatives. The new product categories covered under the scheme include smartcards, consumer appliances, electronic product design, optical fibres, Internet of Things (IoT) products, semiconductor chips etc.
According to reports, the demand for electronics in India is expected to reach USD 400 billion by 2020. The electronics sector has the potential to attract USD 100 billion investment and provide jobs to 28 million people.
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Electronic Industries Association of India ‘ELCINA’ is supporting the M-SIPS scheme and making efforts to develop electronic industry in the country. The association actively interacts with the government and advises it on policy and business environment issues. ELCINA believes that the National Policy on electronics will change the fortunes of electronics industry for all times to come and make a significant global player.
ELCINA has been pursuing for a number of changes in M-SIPS notified in October, 2012 by Department of Electronics & IT (DeitY), Govt of India. The changes were recommended by the members of the association to make the policy more appealing and motivate industry to make investment. A number of key amendments were awaiting cabinet approval, the most critical was the extension of the scheme which was expiring on 26th July 2015. All the stakeholders put their efforts to promote this scheme and the momentum has just started building up. The members took a decision to not to close the scheme at this point of time as it could result in disappointment for the investors, both domestic as well as foreign.
With strong support from DeitY, all major and desired changes have been incorporated in M-SIPS now. This has become possible with the help of team work and specially by Ajay Kumar, additional secretary as he listened to the voice of Industry to devise such an extraordinary scheme to boost electronics manufacturing in India.
Features of M-SIPS Amendments:
