Noida: The government’s production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme has led to incremental job creation of 5,00,000 in the mobile phone industry, Union Minister of Electronics and IT Ashwini Vaishnaw said Thursday. He added that those criticising the country’s mobile phone manufacturing ecosystem saying it is only assembling devices do not know what is manufacturing.
“Our critics, especially the Opposition and some big economists, who say this is assembling and not manufacturing, my clear answer to this is that they don’t know what is manufacturing. The good thing is that the industry has ignored their negative thought process and has moved forward quickly,” Vaishnaw told reporters.
Vaishnaw was speaking at the inauguration of a Rs 256 crore smartphone manufacturing facility in Noida, Uttar Pradesh, of Padget Electronics — a wholly owned subsidiary of Dixon Technologies.
At the event, the minister added that the electronic components ecosystem was developing in the country and India would become a significant component exporter in the next three to four years.
The central government had announced the PLI scheme for mobile phones and specified electronic components in 2020 with an aim to establish India as a hub of electronics manufacturing.
Meanwhile, Dixon Technologies, which is the biggest home-grown electronics manufacturing services provider in India, in a statement issued Thursday said it started manufacturing smartphones for the Chinese device maker Xiaomi in the third quarter (Q3) of calendar year 2023 (CY23), from the new manufacturing unit in Noida.
As many as 5,000 people will work to manufacture smartphones and feature phones at a large scale in the new unit, Vaishnaw said. “The facility spans 2,27,000 square feet and has been built with an investment of Rs 256 crore. It has an annual production capacity of 25 million units,” he added.
Attacking the previous Congress-led governments, Vaishnaw said that during their time, the manufacturing sector was “neglected, ignored and as a policy was discouraged”.
However, under the Make In India initiative announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi after coming to power, a lot of the regulations that discouraged manufacturing were removed, he claimed.
“More than 20,000 compliances and nearly 1,500 archaic laws were removed. Consultations were held with the industry to know about problems and issues that come up in production and job creation. Those were solved,” he said.
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‘Today’s supply chain is very complex’
Vaishnaw cited the example of car manufacturing in the country and argued that all large automobile companies have long lines at their manufacturing plants where components coming from different places are assembled.
“This is manufacturing. Manufacturing of today’s generation is different from the manufacturing of the 1950s-1960s..Today’s supply chain is very complex… Different components are made at different places… There is a lot of complexity…,” he said.
The minister explained that the division of labour, division of skills, etc., are clearly defined. “People who don’t understand this, criticise it. I will tell them this, they should remember nothing happened during their time… Now it’s like khisiyani billi khamba noche (showing anger after being embarrassed).”
According to Vaishnaw, the development of India’s design and component manufacturing ecosystem is “highly encouraging”. “The domestic value addition is increasing by the day, and in some products, it is ‘as high as 60 percent’,” he added.
(Edited by Richa Mishra)
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