National Electronics Policy 2018 to be in Cabinet soon: Prasad

New Delhi, Dec 14 (IANS) Union IT and Electronics Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on Friday said the new draft National Policy on Electronics would soon be finalised and taken up in the Cabinet.Speaking at the first edition of Electronics Summit here organised by the Confederation of India Industry (CII), Prasad observed the new policy would help make India a hub of electronics manufacturing to serve domestic and global markets."The draft National Policy on Electronics 2018 which has undergone wide consultations so far will be finalised and taken up by the Cabinet very soon," a CII statement quoted the Minister as saying.Medical electronics, defence electronics, and automotive are the three areas that would bring excitement in the electronics industry in the coming times, he added.Prasad, who is also the Law Minister, said the government has placed electronics manufacturing on high priority with major focus on initiatives such as 'Digital India', 'Make in India' and supportive 'Foreign Direct Investment' policies to bolster electronic manufacturing. "The industry must now keep a mass movement approach, in terms of creating more human resources, while also moving from scaling up to skilling the industry," the minister added.Speaking at the summit, NITI Aayog Vice-Chairman Rajiv Kumar said: "In next two decades, we need to scale the growth to 25-30 per cent. While value addition is important, we also need to scale up, for which export figures and ambitious targets are more important."The industry must aspire to become $150 billion industry in the next five years," Kumar stressed.
--IANS rrb/pgh/bg