MEITY working with industry to achieve $300 bn electronics production vision: Vaishnaw

The ministry of electronics and information technology (MEITY), ICEA and industry leaders have released a $300 billion vision document pertaining to electronics production. Called the 'Sustainable Electronics Manufacturing & Exports By 2026', it identifies mobile phones, IT hardware, consumer electronics (TV and audio), strategic electronics, and many more products as the key focus area of manufacturing for India.

 

According to the document, the primary short-term strategy must revolve around incentivising scale in the next 1,000 days (2025-26). An increase in scale may set the stage for India to become a significant value addition player subsequently. After the initial 1,000 days, incentivisation of value addition may be prioritised.

 

While releasing the vision document, Ashwini Vaishnaw, Minister of Minister for Communications, Electronics & Information Technology and Railways, Government of India, shared an update on the critical points raised by the industry that will aid in India's vision of electronics manufacturing.

 

To address the industry concerns of having large footprint factories which can hire 40,000 to a lakh workers, Vaishnaw reported back stating the ministry has already met the labour minister. 

"The labour minister is very positive on this. He feels that this is a highly doable thing. This is not something which requires any major change in the legal framework or in the rules framework, it is very much possible just with administrative actions, and the commitment is that if this requires any change in the rules and regulations, or even in the law, then also the commitment is there from the labour ministry."

 

Housing on campus, in other countries,  makes a massive difference in terms of production efficiency, in terms of safety security, amongst others. 

"So this is another thing which is generally not allowed as per our labour regulations. Our team prepared a note on it, using which I had discussions with the state government, labour officials and the labour minister at the Government of India. Both of them feel that just with a little bit of tweaking the regulations, it is possible. So the suggestion here is that we take a particular case and see whether it can be done with state governments tweaking of regulations, or it can be done with central governments advisory to the state government and then subsequent tweaking of regulations by the state government," said Vaishnaw. 

The minister requested colleagues from the industry to come up with one specific location where this could be tested and then taken forward from there.

 

The minister also clarified that the telecom department will not enter into mobile manufacturing at all. Mobile manufacturing will continue to remain the light-touch regulation that is currently there, and that regime is not going to change.

 

Another point that came from the discussions is that in many countries, governments support creating basic infrastructure like having an entire industrial zone. Vaishnaw stated that the ministry had identified at least three locations where this is possible to do. 

One of the locations the team has identified is a large parcel of railway land with a good water facility close to a large city, and accessible by an international airport by  just at an hour's drive. The second land parcel identified is about a 1000 acre land close to another international airport (25 minutes drive). The third identified land is not very close to the airport but is a highly industrialized zone where another 700-800 acre land is available. 

"All of you said that can we do something similar to what Vietnam did, can we do something which China did? Yes, it's possible to do that kind of thing," he said. He invited the industry players to work with the government to shortlist the location for the work to be taken forward innovatively.