‘At least three Indian states commit to build electronic manufacturing hubs’

With the Centre planning a roadmap to make India an electronic manufacturing hub, at least three states have expressed their interest to build such clusters in their regions, shows a new ET Telecom report.

The findings claimed that while Telangana, Maharashtra, and Uttarakhand have already submitted their papers for setting up electronic manufacturing clusters (EMC), a few more states including Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Himachal Pradesh, among others are also firming up similar goals.

It is pertinent to mention here that the Modified Electronics Manufacturing Clusters (EMC 2.0) scheme was announced by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology on April 1, 2020.

The scheme provides financial assistance for setting up of both EMC projects and Common Facility Centres (CFCs) across the country and is open for receipt of applications for a period of three years from the date of notification.

Further period of 5 years is available for disbursement of funds to the approved projects.

IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, while presenting the vision document prepared by India Cellular and Electronics Association (ICEA), had also affirmed that electronics manufacturing will be worth $300 billion in India by 2026.

While outlining the broad contours of the document, he noted that there have been discussions with the labour ministry to facilitate the functioning of large footprint factories that can hire 40,000 to 100,000 workers and beyond.

He also maintained that the government is also taking steps to create basic infrastructure for industrial zones, and has identified at least three locations where this can be done.

Also read: Government releases roadmap to push electronics manufacturing to $300 billion by 2026

The buoyancy in the market arises at a time when India’s electronic exports surged by 49% to US$ 11 billion between April to December 2021 quarter, vis-à-vis $ 7.4 billion in the same period of the previous year.

While mobile phones constituted a major chunk of electronic goods shipments, other segments such as IT hardware (laptops, tablets), consumer electronics (TV and audio), industrial electronics, auto electronics, components, LED lighting and telecom equipment also posted healthy growth in numbers.

While FDI up to 100% is allowed for electronics manufacturing under the automatic route (subject to applicable laws), phased manufacturing programme (PMP) has been notified to boost domestic value addition in mobile phones and their sub-assemblies or parts manufacturing,