India aims for $400B electronics manufacturing sector by 2020

India is aiming for a US$400 billion electronics manufacturing industry by 2020, which means the industry must increase by more than five times over the next seven years.

Tto achieve the stated goal, the government will subsidize 50 percent of the cost of building electronics manufacturing clusters (EMC) that create products in up to 27 verticals, including automative, medical, and avionicss, according to a the Times of India report on Wednesday.

india-keyboard — India aims for $400B electronics manufacturing sector by 2020.

The government hopes the subsidy, which is capped at US$8.7 million (500 million rupees), will encourage the build of 200 Indian EMCs by 2020, according to Department of Electronics and Information technology Secretary J. Satyanarayana.

"We are importing so much of electronics items that we are draining our foreign exchange. So, manufacturing is of course the focus area for us in the latest National IT Policy (2012). We are looking at an electronics manufacturing industry the size of US$400 billion by 2020, from US$70 billion now," said Satyanarayana.

The IT department has already received eight proposals, worth US$368 million (21 billion rupees), to build EMCs. It is also considering establishing a US$350 million (20 million rupees) electronics development fund to promote innovation.