In a leg up to the Centre’s Production-Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme, global mobile manufacturers have lined up to set up manufacturing bases in India and are ‘positive’ about the kind of incentives proposed under the PLI scheme. According to the ministry of commerce, the scheme is likely to bring in investment of around Rs 3,000 crore and generate huge direct and indirect employment.
The Union government on Wednesday announced that top telecom players including Ericsson and Nokia were keen to expand their operations in India, and global companies like Samsung, Cisco, Ciena and Foxconn have also ‘shown interest’ to set up a manufacturing base in the country for telecom and networking products for domestic and export markets.
According to the top government sources, following the announcement of new incentives under the PLI scheme global mobile manufacturers have shown keen interest to expand their manufacturing facilities in India.
“Global players are ‘positive’ about the kind of incentives proposed under the Production-Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme,” a government note said.
According to the commerce ministry sources, companies including Ericsson Sweden and Nokia Finland are keen to expand their existing operation in India for the global supply chain. “Global telecom companies like Samsung South Korea, Cisco USA, Ciena USA, and Engineering Manufacturing Services (EMS) companies like Jabil USA, Foxconn Taiwan, Sanmina USA and Flex USA have shown interest to set up manufacturing in India for telecom and networking products for domestic as well as export markets,” the government note said.
Further Indian manufacturers like VVDN Technologies (Gurugram), Dixon, HFCL, Coral Telecom and Seerlite have also shown interest in the Rs 12,195 crores scheme, which was notified in February 2021.
The PLI scheme in telecom and networking products aims to make India a global hub of manufacturing telecom equipment, including core transmission equipment, 4G/5G next generation Radio Access Network and wireless equipment, access and Customer Premises Equipment (CPE), Internet of Things (IoT) access devices, other wireless equipment and enterprise equipment like switches, routers amongst others.
As per the latest estimates, the full utilisation of the scheme funds is likely to lead to incremental production of around Rs 2.4 lakh crore with exports of around Rs 2 lakh crore over five years. The scheme is also likely to bring in investment of around Rs 3,000 crore and generate huge direct and indirect employment.
The core component of the scheme is to offset the huge import of telecom equipment worth over Rs 50,000 crore and reinforce it with ‘Made in India’ products both for domestic markets and exports. The scheme looks to make India a preferred global manufacturing destination for telecom products as also a netexporter of telecom and networking products.
