MAIT, an ICT industry association, has organized Electronics Manufacturing Summit 2018 in New Delhi, India.

Rajiv Kumar, vice chairman of NITI Aayog and Ajay Prakash Sawhney, secretary of MeitY, launched Electronics Supplier Portal that will be acting as an ecosystem builder linking governments, manufacturer and local suppliers in electronics industry.

“India government can address electronics manufacturing issues through policies. Increase in the value addition from 5-7 percent is the main suggestion for electronic industry to blossom in India. We need to promote CKD manufacturing in the country as mere SKD will not help in value addition and MAIT is committed to making this happen,” said Nitin Kunkolienker, president of MAIT.

Ajay Prakash Sawhney, secretary of MeitY, said the government has supported more than 100 SMT lines in order move towards sub-assembly from assembly. “We have enormous demand, capability in design and embedded system, which will help in forming further momentum in manufacturing. The summit will help us come up with new recommendations for National Policy on Electronics.”

Jeff Purnell, global chief procurement officer of Cisco Systems, said digitization is changing the manufacturing and supply chain model in India and companies need to invest more in disruptive technologies to stay ahead.

“Cisco is committed to the Make in India initiative and is working on to not only assemble but manufacture and increase sourcing. The coordination between State and Central Government needs to have a very laser focus on promoting efficiency and speed to promote manufacturing in the country,” Jeff Purnell said.

SK Marwaha, director of MeitY, said the challenge that the government faces is that most of the electronic products fall under ITA and the customs duty is zero. “We cannot impose BCD and hence we need to explore some better route.”