India’s exports of electronics goods touched an all-time high of Rs 9812 crore in March, just before Covid second wave hit the country, data released by the commerce ministry last week showed.
Of this, mobile phones remained the top contributor with exports worth Rs 3421 crore or roughly 35% of total electronics exports.
For the year FY20-21, exports of electronics goods was at Rs 78,606 crore, a 1.17% decline from previous fiscal’s Rs 79,536 crore ,despite washout of production of 45 days during the Covid first wave, the data showed.
While exports of mobile phones decreased 16% to Rs 22,868 crore for the whole year, imports more than doubled to Rs 16,643 crore on account of a shutdown of manufacturing facilities and high imports of completely built units from China to cater to high local demand.
Laptops and personal computers continued to be the largest imported product category, recording a 50% rise in imports to Rs 35,133 by value during the previous fiscal with exports at Rs 176 crore. Experts said that the low exports were due to absence of a local manufacturing ecosystem.
Overall, imports of electronics goods for the financial year also continued to be high at Rs 3.7 lakh crore, up 5.26% on year.
Besides smartphones, electronics goods comprises computers/laptops, electric inverters, transformers, battery chargers, scanners, printers, speakers, TVs, base stations and microprocessors.
The National Policy on Electronics 2019 envisages total production of electronics in India to the tune of $400 billion by 2025. Close to $190 billion, or 48% of this is expected to come from mobile phones as per official figures.
Further, the industry is estimating that 13% of this target production can be achieved from laptops, tablets or PCs and another 22% from industrial electronics.
The central government’s production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme for mobile phones is expected to generate an output of Rs 10.5 lakh crore over the next five years, 60% of which will be exported, according to official figures.
Whereas the PLI for IT hardware ie. laptops, tablets, all-in-one personal computers (PCs) and servers will give rise to production worth Rs 1.61 lakh crore, of which exports will be to the tune of Rs 60,000 crore over four years.
