DeitY gets ready to felicitate outstanding electronics companies by 2015

This award scheme has been approved by the government and the first award ceremony will be held in 2015. The winning amount will be Rs 100,000

By EB Bureau

Thursday, May 15, 2014: To motivate the electronics industry, the Department of Electronics and IT (DeitY), Government of India, has launched an award scheme to felicitate and acknowledge the efforts of companies that have been doing well and are triggering growth in the industry.

Addressing the ‘CEO Summit: The Second Sunrise for the ESDM Sector in India,’ which was held on February 21, 2014, during the EFY Expo 2014, Dr Ajay Kumar, joint secretary, DeitY, said, “This award scheme has been approved by the government and the first award ceremony will be held in 2015. The winning amount will be Rs 0.1 million.” DeitY will form state level committees to take cognisance of the potential awardees and decide the winners.

Scheme for DTA (domestic tariff area) units

The National Policy for Electronics 2012 states that the domestic tariff area (DTA) sales of ITA (information technology agreement) List 1 products (with zero duty), also known as ITA-1, will be treated as physical exports and all benefits of export schemes will be extended to them.

Industry experts point out that even those items that were not part of ITA-1 were made ‘zero duty’ when the commerce ministry signed free trade agreements with several countries.

DeitY is now working on a scheme for DTA units of ITA products. “ITA products are competing globally at zero duty and, therefore, when a company is producing an ITA product in DTA, it does not get all the benefits of the export schemes. So to offset that and to treat these products at par with other export products, we are working on a scheme that will provide incentives for ITA units manufacturing in DTA, and this will provide the required competitiveness,” said Dr Ajay Kumar.

Second list of items soon to meet standards

Dr Ajay Kumar also informed the audience that soon DeitY would come up with the second list of electronics and IT products that will have to meet quality standards. “Here, the government seeks the industry’s feedback with regard to the products that industry deems to be of high priority, that can be added to this second list,” he said.

Earlier, the government had mandated a list of 15 items that were required to meet standards if being manufactured in or imported into India. This was done to curb the entry of sub-standard products into the country.