India’s Union Cabinet has approved the National Policy on Electronics 2019 (NPE 2019), proposed by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY).
According to a press release, the policy envisions positioning India as a global hub for Electronics System Design and Manufacturing (ESDM). Hoping to achieve this by “encouraging and driving capabilities in the country for developing core components, including chipsets, and creating an enabling environment for the industry to compete globally.”
The NPE will create an EDSM ecosystem through the promotion of domestic manufacturing and export in the entire value chain of ESDM.
The policy will provide incentives and support for the manufacturing of core electronic components.
It will offer special package incentives for mega-projects that are especially “high-tech and entail huge investments, such as semiconductor facilities display fabrication, etc.”
Additionally, the NPE will formulate suitable schemes and “incentive mechanisms” to encourage new units and the expansion of existing units.
It will promote industry-led research and development and innovation in all sub-sectors of electronics. These include grass-root level innovations and early-stage start-ups in emerging technology areas such as 5G, loT and sensors, Al, machine learning, virtual reality, drones, robotics, additive manufacturing, photonics, and nano-based devices, among others.
Finally, the NPE will promote electronics value chain initiatives to improve the national cybersecurity profile and offer incentives and support to increase the availability of skilled manpower, which includes re-skilling.
For skill development, the government has launched two schemes. The first scheme is for financial assistance to states and union territories for skill development in the ESDM sector. It provides for 75 percent of training fee as assistance for training courses identified by the Electronics Sector Skills Council and the Telecom Sector Skills Council.
The scheme is intended for students and unemployed youth from grades 9 and 10 onwards (diploma and non-engineering graduates) to increase their employability to work in ‘manufacturing’ and ‘service support’ fields.
The second programme is a part of the Digital India initiative for the skill development of 328,000 people in the ESDM.
The release said that the implementation of programmes under the aegis of the NEP 2012 has successfully consolidated the foundations for a competitive Indian ESDM value chain.
NPE 2019 will replace the earlier policy but intends to build its groundwork to propel the growth of the country’s ESDM industry.
The NPE will lead to the launch of several other schemes, initiatives, projects, and measures for the development of the ESDM sector.
The government is targeting the promotion of domestic manufacturing and export in the entire value chain of ESDM for economic development to achieve a turnover of US $400 billion (approximately IN ₹26,00,000 crores) by 2025.
This will include targeted production of one billion mobile handsets by 2025, valued at US $190 billion (approximately IN ₹13,00,000 crores), including 600 million mobile handsets valued at US $110 billion (approximately IN ₹7,00,000 crores) for export.
