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Budget 2017: Jaitley boosts electronic manufacturing by boosting MSIPS, EDF
As a part of his announcement, Jaitley said that the government was allocating a record Rs 745 crore for such policies for the period of FY18 citing that nearly 40 foreign companies had started manufacturing in the country.
Union Finance minister Arun Jaitley on Wednesday in his budget speech provided more sops to mobile handset-makers by providing a boost to policies like modified special incentive package scheme (MSIPS) and EDF that were designed to encourage local manufacturing.
As a part of his announcement, Jaitley said that the government was allocating a record Rs 745 crore for such policies for the period of FY18 citing that nearly 40 foreign companies had started manufacturing in the country.
He said that over 250 investment proposals have been received in the last 2 years - totalling an investment of Rs. 1,26,000 crores. “I’ve therefore exponentially increased the allocation of schemes like mSIPS and EDFs to Rs. 745 crores in 2017-18 - an all-time high.”
India is one of the fastest growing smartphone markets in the world and the government has been trying to bring in more component ecosystem in the country to generate more employment and make handsets cheaper which it claims will be one of the building block of Digital India.
Jaitley also said that manufacturing will also get a boost from the to be newly formed trade infra export scheme. He also said that the government would be investing Rs 3,96,136 crore.
Earlier, government officials had hinted that fresh investments were expected in the handset-manufacturing sector and was being done to generate more employment opportunities.
Also, iPhone-maker Apple has been asking more incentives to start making iPhones in India. Industry experts and analysts believe that Apple commencing operations will help bring more component manufacturers into the country thereby completing the ecosystem.
Currently a lot of handset-makers assembles smartphones in the currently either in their own factories or they contract-manufacture with Foxconn, Flex and Wistron.
