New Delhi: Amid the border standoff India is now aiming to hurt China in a different manner. China has created its dominance in mobile phone manufacturing and is currently the number one in the world. India is trying to surpass China in the field of mobile phone manufacturing. India plans to do this with the production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme attracting global majors in this segment to India. This information was shared Monday by Telecom and IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad.
The minister said that the government is looking to make India a hub of other electronic products as well. This will be done with the expansion of the PLI scheme to other sectors.
“We wanted India to become the second largest mobile manufacturer in the world. Now I am pushing India to surpass China. That’s my goal and I am very clearly defining it,” Prasad said. He was addressing a gathering at the FICCI AGM.
India became the second largest mobile manufacturing country in 2017.
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The National Policy on Electronics 2019 (NPE) envisages electronic manufacturing turnover of more than Rs 26 lakh crore by 2025. A total of Rs 13 lakh crore of this amount is expected to come from the mobile phone segment.
PLI is designed to propel India’s stature and ease of doing business under the leadership of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The effort is to showcase India as an alternate manufacturing destination, Prasad said. “PLI is designed to enable global champion companies to come to India,” he noted.
The government has started a PLI scheme under which eligible companies can get sops of around Rs 48,000 crore. The government has cleared 16 proposals from domestic and international companies entailing investment of Rs 11,000 crore under the PLI scheme to manufacture mobile phones worth Rs 10.5 lakh crore over the next five years.
The companies include iPhone maker Apple’s contract manufacturers Foxconn Hon Hai, Wistron and Pegatron. There is also Samsung and Rising Star.
Domestic companies whose proposals have been approved include Lava, Bhagwati (Micromax), Padget Electronics (Dixon Technologies), UTL Neolyncs and Optiemus.