NEW DELHI: Furthering Prime Minister Modi's focus on domestic manufacturing, the India Electronics and Semiconductor Association (IESA) and Taipei Computer Association on Thursday signed a memorandum of understanding to promote local manufacturing in the field of semiconductors and electronics.
Among the first in a series of initiatives to promote local manufacturing in the country in collaboration with countries such as Taiwan, IESA will look to capitalise on Taiwan's experience, which is a known leader in the field of manufacturing and electronics. The Association has set up a front office in Bangalore, and has visited Karnataka, Gurgaon, Noida and Ahmedabad as potential sites to build a technology hub.
"They are seeing about 200-300 acres of land, for setting up a Taiwanese hardware park. On merit they will zero in on one or two of these places," said MN Vidyashankar, president, IESA. One of Taiwan's top builders, Century Developers has shown interest in developing these sites.
Domestic production of electronics has been a focus area of the new government, which recognises that India's electronics import bill is expected to exceed $400 billion, an amount that exceeds the country's oil imports. The Minister for Communications and information technology Ravi Shankar Prasad has said time and again that the government is looking to reduce the country's dependence on imports.
The Department of electronics and information technology (DeitY) is looking to partner with experienced players to set up manufacturing clusters. "We have received proposals worth about Rs 70,000 crore in the last 18 months or so. All of them are from abroad from US, Japan, Korea, Taiwan," said DeitY joint secretary Dr Ajay Kumar said.
The discussions to partner with Taiwan in order to boost Indian manufacturing have been going on for three or four years, and several delegations comprising of DeitY and industry bodies such as Manufacturers Association for Information technology, IESA, Indian Cellular Association (ICA) and Electronics Industries Association of India have visited Taiwan to formalise terms.
ICA signed an MoU withTaiwan Electrical and Electronic Manufacturers' Association (TEEMA) about six months ago, and is working to finalise the terms of a formal arrangement with the Institute for Information Industry (Taiwan), said ICA president Pankaj Mohindroo. His association will focus on manufacturing of mobile phones and solid state lighting or LED, he added.
IESA further said it was in advanced stages of discussions to sign an MoU with Japan, which could be finalised within a fortnight.
It is however, early days to say how these collaborations will turn out, but the government is moving in the right direction, said Neel Ratan, executive director at PwC. "This can go a long way coupled with other initiatives for keeping our import bill on electronics lower...The government is aware and it has been trying, it has only been partially successful (so far)," he said.
Before electronics manufacturing in India becomes a reality, the government will also have to sort out issues such as whether it is cheaper to manufacture or to import electronics goods, he added.
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