The India New Electronics Manufacturing Policy Brings Contentious Analysis
On Oct. 3, India government announced the draft of a new electronics policy. It tries to build a strong manufacturing base to solve the current weak manufacturing ecosystem in place. And it is reported that more policy issues are to be announced over an unspecified period of time.
The draft focuses on several long-pending issues, including the creation of a National Electronics Mission that covers the setting up of wafer fabrication facilities, VLSI incubation centers and the development of a so-called “India microprocessor.”
The steps include special and attractive financial incentives for indigenous manufacturing, setting up of wafer fab facilities, giving locally manufactured electronic systems a boost by preferential treatment in purchases, creating a fund for promoting electronics manufacturing in particular, creating scores of clusters for promoting electronics manufacturing and paying special attention to automotive electronics and industrial electronics.
The hope is to grow production in India from about $20 billion in 2009 to a large but unspecified target that includes growing chip design in India to $55 billion and growing tech exports to $80 billion. India’s current chip design export revenue is about $7.5 billion.
To this draft, people have discussed more in these days. It is regarded as one of the most significant in the history of electronics production in India, even though most said they would wait for the final policy to be announced before commenting on the same.
“We are sure that this policy will give a much needed fillip to the electronics and system design industry in India,” said P.V.G. Menon, president of the India Semiconductor Association. “Measures like the electronic product development fund, the focus on talent development and the preferential market access to local products could act as the key catalysts to spurring innovation and the growth of world class companies in this sector.”
Some people think that the announcement of this policy is too late, and India should know IT and software much more important than semiconductors and hardware. Unless there are solid plans for tech transfer and fab closures in US, Europe, and Japan, they should have done this a decade ago. The electronics production is very important for any country. Now China is holding its big share. Compete the cost of production with China is a real great challenging task. The Govt of India needs a strong intelligent calculative speculative entrepreneur long term policies to become successful.
However, some thought that it is not sure it’s too late. The hope is to grow production in India from about $20 billion in 2009 to a large but unspecified target that includes growing chip design in India to $55 billion and growing tech exports to $80 billion. India’s current chip design export revenue is about $7.5 billion. With their market size, human capital, and cash stocks they can do it. World has lots of Indian design engineers in micro-electronics field, with such incentive plan and support from state why they can’t be successful. Abu Dhabi doe the same yet they are lacking the educated engineers who can run the show.
And there are also opinions that India government made a great policy. Their software industry is developing well, if they invest much and give full support on hardware, they have chance to pass China. You know, now China faces many problems, high CPI, high house price, inflation, etc. Many middle and small private companies could not get loan from government-owned banks, their common operation is very difficult, even many companies’ bosses leave China to oversea because they could not pay off their debt which borrowed from underground with very high profit rate.
Whatever, what we can do is just to wait the detailed policies and only time can see the following influences which will bring to India