Kapil Sibal aims to boost domestic electronics manufacturing with new draft policy

NEW DELHI: India aims to achieve a turnover of $400 billion from domestic electronics manufacturing by 2020. The government will take a series of initiatives to attract $100-billion investment in this sector, communication minister Kapil Sibal said on Monday.

Unveiling the draft electronics manufacturing policy, Sibal pointed out that domestic manufacturing in the current scenario could cater to only $100 billion worth of products by 2020 against a $400 million and the rest of the requirements would therefore have to be met by imports.

"This aggregates to a demand supply gap of nearly $300 billion by 2020. Unless the situation is corrected, it is likely that by 2020 the electronics import may far exceed oil imports," Sibal said.

"The National Policy of Electronics-2011 envisions creating a globally competitive electronics systems design and manufacturing (ESDM) industry, including nano-electronics, to meet the country's needs and serve the international market," he added. The minister said that the policy help generate 28 million jobs and would be finalised by the year-end.

As of 2009, domestic manufacturing in electronics amounted to only $20 billion. Off the $400 billion in sales that the country aims to generate, about $55 billion will be from chip design and embedded software industry and another $80 billion will be from exports in the sector. The minister said that draft policy proposes tax incentives, special funding, 200 manufacturing clusters and preferential access for locally-made products among other initiatives to boost domestic manufacturing.