DIP IN IMPORT OF MOBILE PARTS FROM CHINA
India has reduced its dependence on China for mobile and electronic components by $8 billion in one year. Increase in domestic production has partly helped India achieve this.
Import of mobile phones, mobile phone parts, routers, modems, intercom etc from China has come down from
$15.3 billion in 2017-18 to $7.2 billion in 2018-19 — a decline of
$8 billion. This is one of the key categories that has helped India bring down its overall imports from China.
Meanwhile, the total import of these products from different countries came down from
$21 billion to $16.8 billion in one year time – a drop of $4.5 billion. While increased Indian production helped the import come down by around $4.5 billion, imports from other countries supported cutting import dependence on China.
According to Indian Cellular Association, annual production of mobile phones in India increased from 3 million units in 2014 to 11 million units in
2017. “In the past few years India has significantly increased its production capacity of mobile phones. This has partly helped India cut its import from China,’ said Pawan Gupta, founder OF Connect2India.
Meanwhile, some of the manufacturing activity has recently shifted from China to countries like Vietnam. Samsung and Google are some of the companies which have either fully or partially moved production from China. India too is a beneficiary of this move.
The trade war with the US was one of the reasons that prompted mobile and electronic product manufacturers to look at diversification of production into other countries.
Indian import from Vietnam increased by over $1 billion in this one year. Hong Kong too increased its shipments by around $2.4 billion.
Increased domestic production also helped India hike export of these products by
$1.4 billion from $1.1 billion in
2017-18 to $2.5 billion in 201819. This is expected to go up in the coming years as companies like Samsung Display has recently announced its plans to set up a manufacturing facility in India by making an investment of `3,500 crore. India has an opportunity to further increase its production by adopting manufacturingfriendly policies.