Govt to address disabilities across sectors to establish India as an alternative manufacturing hub
COVID-19 CASES
WorldIndiaConfirmed11,933Deaths392Confirmed2,056,055Deaths134,178New Delhi: The Indian government held high-level meetings to set in motion a strategy to wean away manufacturing from China and fast-tracking efforts by tapping into palpable global anger against the Far East nation amid the Covid-19 outbreak, officials familiar with the matter said.
“Countries such as Japan are already looking to diversify their manufacturing and supply chains to newer destinations…the government is working to address disabilities across sectors, including for pharmaceuticals and automobiles, to try and establish India as an alternate to China for manufacturing for local and global markets across sectors,” one of the officials privy to the matter, told ET. The idea is to spur employment, revenue and earn forex by making India an export hub.
Last week, the Japanese government announced that it has earmarked $2.2 billion of its record economic stimulus package to help its manufacturers shift production out of China as the coronavirus disrupts supply chains between the major trading partners.
The government is aware that almost all countries, including the US, have received a “massive jolt” with the outbreak of Covid-19 and realise they need to diversify risk in their production lines.
“India is at a very sweet spot and the Indian government wants to ‘tap’ into this potential,” another official said. India had kick started such efforts, but has so far been focused on electronics manufacturing.
The government last month notified three schemes with incentives totalling ₹48,000 crore to boost mobile phone manufacturing in the country and the dominant production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme has the lion’s share of close to ₹41,000 crore with sops to be spread over three years. The aim is to attract top smartphone players like Apple, Samsung, Oppo and Vivo to set up their entire value chain in India, and make the country their export hub.
Source: indiatimes.com