Minister of State for Communications and IT Sachin Pilot said in absence of local manufacturing India will have to import electronics products to meet domestic demand, which will be “more than oil import bill of the country” in the next 10 years.
“We exported USD 78 billion worth of softwares last year.But demand for electronics industry in India today is USD 45 billion. In less than 10 years it will become USD 500 billion that will more than the oil import bill of this country,” Pilot said while speaking at an AIMA event.
“We will have to import all these hundreds of billions worth of electronics good if we don”t start manufacturing them,” he added. Earlier estimates submitted by IT Task Force showed that India”s demand for electronics products (including telecom) will be USD 400 billion by 2020. At the existing rate of growth, the production of electronics hardware is likely to grow to USD 104 billion by 2020, creating a demand and supply gap of USD 296 billion, which would have to be met through imports, it had said.
To promote ecosystem, Department of Information Technology has said that it will set up a Rs 5,0000 million Electronics Development Fund focusing on development of technology that is of strategic interest for the country.
In mid April, The Cabinet approved setting up high powered committee to set up two semiconductor wafer fabrication plant for making electronic chips in the country with investment of Rs 25,0000 million (USD 5 billion approximately).
Pilot said the government is building up eco-system to create to facilitate manufacturing in the country.
