India is inching towards becoming production hub for mobile components, plans incentives

The Indian government is planning to make the country a production hub for mobile components and accessories in a phased manner and for this it is giving the required incentives to local manufacturing units.

The incentives are expected to include change in duty structures in a phased manner.

"There is a provision to manufacture a few accessories in the Union Budg2016-17. In the next three to four years' time, India will have a full-scale components manufacturing operational," Department of Electronics and IT additional secretary Ajay Kumar told ET.

Presently, over 90 per cent of the mobile components are imported in the country from China and Taiwan.

The government is mulling to shake up component-level manufacturing, which can dovetail into creating new opportunities.

This is also deemed important for PM Narendra Modi’s ‘Make in India’ initiative.

"A fine balance has to be created in the phased manufacturing program (PMP) to enable the final product assembly industry to fully blossom, so that it can attract the components industry vigorously," Pankaj Mohindroo, president of Indian Cellular Association, told ET.

So far, the finance department has temporarily lowered import duty from 29.5 per cent to 12.5 per cent on accessories that include mobile chargers, adapters and headsets.

"Other than the items notified by the government, we are hopeful that more accessories and components will be rolled out for domestic manufacturing in one to two years' time," Sanjay Kumar Kalirona, headmobile business, Intex Technologies, told ET.