NEW DELHI: Government has received proposals worth Rs 65,000 crore for electronics manufacturing in the country, telecom minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said.

“In principal approval has been given to 21 electronics manufacturing clusters. Almost Rs 65,000 crore worth proposals have been received under MSIPS and Rs 9,000 crore of which have been approved,” Prasad said while speaking at an event.

The minister said that electronics is going to drive growth of India, revenue and employment in the country.

Government has identified manufacturing as one of important pillar of growth.

The minister said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi will inaugurate a massive Digital India programme on July 1.

“We are planning to celebrate Digital India week which will be inaugurated by the PM,” Prasad said.

IT industry body Nasscom and the India Electronics and Semiconductor Association today entered into agreement to work together with an aim to push the share of electronics manufacturing and IT to 25% of the country’s GDP by 2025.

“The collaboration between Nasscom and IESA is a natural outcome of similar goals and mindset. We have signed memorandum of understanding (Mo) with Nasscom with a vision to take share of ESDM and IT in country’s GDP to 25% by 2025,” said IESA chairman Vinay Shenoy.

India has been a global leader in building and delivering software and IT services, which contributes more than 9% of the GDP but its electronic market almost entirely dominated by imports.

“This MoU signed between Nasscom and IESA is an effort to combine strengths that India has in electronic system design which is part of IT industry. This convergence is important because technology has blurred difference between hardware and software,” Nasscom president and former IT and telecom secretary R Chandrashekhar said.

He said that both the organization will work on identifying key growth area, facilitate business tie-ups among members of each other and work with government for setting up incubation centre.

Indian Electronic System Design and Manufacturing (ESDM) market is expected to grow from $76 billion in 2013 to $94 billion in 2015 and touch $400 billion by 2020.

Source: Times of India