Business

Scale up operations, exports: Ravi Shankar Prasad to electronics CEOs

Sentinel Digital Desk

New Delhi: Projecting India as an emerging hub for electronics manufacturing, Information Technology (IT) Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on Monday told leading CEOs of the technology majors to scale up operations and said that India's fundamentals of the economy are strong.

"Electronics manufacturing in India has recorded tremednous growth. The Value of Electronics products manufactured in India has increased from $29 billion in 2014-15 to $70 billion in 2018-19. Government aims to make India global hub of electronic manufacturing and in this regard will help and support the industry in getting entire supply chain to India", Prasad said while addressing the top brass of global tehnology giants.

Electronics hardware manufacturers like Dixon Electronics and Dell Computers raised the issue of high taxation on exports and wanted some relaxation.

Dixon Electronics said China gives tariff and non tariff support as well as value added incentives. There is high taxation on exports of 30 per cent in India against 20 per cent in Singapore.

Dell Computers said, in India, hardware production volumes are low, it needs export promotion. The elctronics components are non-existent.

Earlier Reaching out to the electronics and mobile companies to step up manufacturing, export from India, Prasad while addressing the CEOs and heads of leading electronics and mobile companies like Apple, Dell, Oppo and Samsung among others said India is the best place to be in for the electronics majors.

Pitching for high investments from the tech companies, Prasdad said India's start up movement is catching up and has a huge knowledge services economy. The country has political stability and tele-density is over 90 per cent. The country is the fifth largest economy globally and is working to take the economy towards 5 trillion dollars by 2025. Notwithstanding global turbulences, India's fundamentals continue to be strong. World is looking to India for investment. From a small start of two in 2014, there are 268 mobile manufacturing ecosystem units now. The government has open arm policy towards new investors in electronics and allied industry, Prasad added.

Due to efforts made by Government in last five years, India has emerged as the 2nd largest Mobile phone manufacturer in the world. In 2014, there were only 2 mobile phone factories in India. There has been a tremendous growth in number of mobile phones manufactured in India in last five years, he said. (IANS)