With initiatives like Make in India, Skill in India, Start-up India and Smart Cities, the government is aiming at a $1 trillion digital economy in the coming 5-7 years which includes communication, IT and IT enabled services, electronic manufacturing, e-commerce, digital payments and cyber security.
According to ET Telecom, Ravi Shankar Prasad, Minister of IT and Electronics at an event said that the number is achievable because the communication industry’s worth is $150 billion, IT and IT enabled services stand up to $50 billion, both totaling to $300 billion. Electronic manufacturing in India is worth $100 billion, e-commerce is $35 billion and even without including digital payments, the entire ecosystem has a worth of more than $400 billion at present.
Mobile manufacturing in India increased to Rs 540 billion in 2015-2016 and is likely to exceed Rs 900 billion by the end of this year, according to official data.
“When our government had come, we had investment of only Rs 110 billion in the electronic sector which is now at Rs 1530 billion,” told the IT Minister.
The IT Minister further said that the mobile phones manufacturing (units) were 60 million in 2014-15, 110 billion in 2015-16 and 17.5 crore in 2016-17; and the projection is that it may go to 320 billion by the end of this year. The government is aiming at 500 billion mobile phones (units) in the coming 2-3 years.
Recently, the government had also assured the handset industry that making phones in India will continue to be incentivised even under the goods and services tax regime. The assurance came after the GST Council fixed the tax rate on handsets at 12 percent where the industry sought a tax rate of 5 per cent.
