After smartphones, focus now on manufacturing laptops, tablets: Prasad

The government’s new focus area is to become the hub of manufacturing of electronics, such as laptops and tablets, and equipment such as servers, as the country focuses on developing the domestic manufacturing ecosystem with the help of initiatives like the production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme.

During his address at Ficci’s annual general meeting on Monday, telecom and IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said, besides further boosting India’s manufacturing capabilities with respect to mobile phones, the other “important” area is producing laptops, tablets here. “Now, my focus is that India emerges as a big centre for manufacturing of other important electronic gadgets which have become integral to our day-to-day existence, that is from laptops and tablets to servers. And the whole ecosystem from mobile to server is developing very fast. I intend to push it with great speed,” he said.

Interestingly, India has witnessed a strong and growing demand for tablets, laptops and notebooks as trends like work from home (WFH) and learning from home (LFH) have picked up pace.

Elaborating on the PLI scheme, the minister said his other focus is to replace China as the centre of mobile manufacturing. When the NDA came to power in 2014, India had only two mobile factories and now it has 260 mobile manufacturing units. The country has become the second-biggest mobile manufacturer in the world, he said.

“Now I’m pushing India to surpass China. That’s my goal. PLI is designed to propel India’s stature, ease of doing business availability, etc. The vision of Prime Minister Narendra Modi is to showcase India as an alternative manufacturing location. I announced this theme in April 2020 and the last day was July 31. During the height of Covid-19, we got good representation from companies,” he noted.

Prasad said the applications of 10 mobile manufacturing companies, including both domestic and foreign, have been approved for the scheme to boost large-scale electronics manufacturing as part of the Aatmanirbhar Bharat initiative.

PLI scheme extends an incentive of 4-6% on incremental sales (over base year) of goods under target segments that are manufactured in India to eligible companies for a period of five years, subsequent to the base year (FY20).

In October, the ministry of electronic and IT (MeitY) had said it has approved 16 applicants under the PLI scheme, both global and domestic handset manufacturing firms and electronic components manufacturers. This will lead to an estimated production of Rs 10.5 lakh crore worth of components and mobile phones and exports of Rs 6.5 lakh crore are expected over the next five years.