Fixing Broken Links
To boost telecom manufacturing in the country, the government has announced many policies in 2011—National Telecom Policy 2012 (NTP 2012), Preferential Market Access (PMA) Policy, National Manufacturing Policy and National Policy on Electronics 2012. The objective of all these policies is to create a conducive environment for telecom manufacturing in the country so that India can become global leader in manufacturing by catering to India requirement as well as looking at export markets of Africa, Middle East and Europe.
The first policy to be rolled out in this direction was the National Manufacturing Policy (NMP) by Ministry of Commerce, Government of India followed by others. All this will give a big fillip to manufacturing in the country.
Presently, manufacturing contributes just over 16% of GDP and is much below its target potential as this sector can contribute around 25% to overall GDP by 2022, if the manufacturing sector can grow at over 12% per annum.
The manufacturing sector plans to create 100 mn additional jobs by 2022 as per NMP, and the government is planning to give special attention to sectors such as aerospace, shipping, IT hardware, telecom equipment, defence equipment, and solar energy. To catalyze manufacturing growth in the country, the policy talks about establishment of National Investment and Manufacturing Zones (NIMZs) which will be developed as integrated industrial townships, bench-marked with the best manufacturing hubs in the world. Focus should be also on providing support in terms of free land, tax holidays, excise duty/sales tax exemption if equipment is sourced locally. Even tax benefits on applied research will make manufacturing locally more competitive with other countries.
The policy also plans to create appropriate skill-sets to be deployed by ICT industries by creating a 3-tier structure for skill development through relevant vocational and skill training through establishment of ITIs in PPP mode; specialized skill development through establishment of polytechnics; and establishment of instructors’ training center in each NIMZ. The policy also plans to create an R&D