Thursday, May 30, 2013: Boosting domestic electronics manufacturing is one of the prime agendas of the government at present. In a bid to encourage states to increase manufacturing of electronics hardware, Kapil Sibal, minister of telecommunications and information technology, met the state government representatives and asked them to frame policies in tandem with the Central policy.
Sibal also asked the states to earmark land for setting up clusters for manufacturing electronic hardware under the ‘National Policy on Electronics (NPE) 2012’. In a round table meeting with the state representatives organised yesterday, Sibal said that these moves will ensure that there is no delay in implementation of the policy.
It is worth mentioning here that the government has announced two schemes, namely Electronics Manufacturing Cluster and Modified Special Incentive Package Scheme (M-SIPS), to attract investment in the electronics hardware manufacturing sector.
The government has committed to provide incentives up to Rs 100,000 million under the M-SIPS scheme during the 12th Plan period (2012-17). According to a PTI report, Sibal said, “We are looking to attract investment of around Rs 200,000 million in the electronics sector this year. I want State governments to have their own manufacturing policy in tandem with Central Government. I am surprised that till now only four States have their electronics policy. Only a few states including Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal and Madhya Pradesh have announced their electronics policy till date. The government also has 12 investment proposals worth Rs 50,000 million from both Indian and global companies under the scheme in its kitty.”
A senior official at Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY) revealed that the round table was attended by representatives from states including Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal, Karnataka, Kerala, Haryana, Gujarat, Odisha and seven States from North-East, who have agreed to take corresponding actions to set up the clusters. Gujarat has promised at least three clusters for manufacturing, informed the official.
In addition to this, Sibal will also meet Central ministers today to discuss Preferential Market Access (PMA), under NPE, for electronic equipment manufacturers in India.
