Thursday, January 02, 2014: Once considered the hottest segment of the Indian economy, the telecom sector has been left behind by the electronic sector in terms of the investment proposals. There were investment proposals of over Rs 620 billion for the sector in 2013.
While the major portion of the investment, Rs 515.50 million was approved in the same year, there were about 20 more entities who proposed to invest about Rs 120 billion in Indian electronics manufacturing sector, which at present is majorly ruled by imports.
And if nothing is done about it, India will reportedly be importing electronics products worth about USD 300 billion. This will exceed the value of the country’s imports of petroleum products.
Telecom and IT minister, Kapil Sibal told Financial Express, “The present import bill of crude oil is about USD 140 billion. Do you think Indian economy can afford to import USD 300 billion of consumer electronics. We will become bankrupt. We have no choice than to build manufacturing sector in our country.”
2013 was a good year for the Indian electronics sector with government boosting it with the first ever policy framework in 2013- National Policy on Electronics. DEITY has already started working on second stage of electronics sector development.
“I would say both 2012 and 2013 should be seen together as foundation year of electronic system and design manufacturing sector. National Policy of Electronics was approved this year but some of the key elements were approved in 2012,” Department of Electronics and IT’s Secretary J Satyanarayana told FE.
Commenting on the growth, Ajay Kumar, DEITY Joint secretary said, “Demand of electronics product domestically is expected to grow to USD 400 billion by 2020. We have seen huge interest for investment in electronics sector. This is just a beginning. Now we have to work for second level of policy intervention which related to streamlining business process, approvals and taxations.”
