New Delhi, Apr 15 (KNN)  With an aim to enhance technology development and manufacture of hardware in the country, the Department of Electronics and Information Technology  (DeitY) under the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology has called for professionals to support formation and implementation of policies.

The programme termed Electronics System Design and Manufacturing (ESDM) is a part of the government’s initiative to increase domestic manufacturing capacity to USD 400 billion over the next 10 years. 

Consultants are called to participate in the Programme Management Unit (PMU) to handle market assessment, policy formulation and implementation, investment promotion and skills development and so on. 

“The Government of India seeks to radically change electronics hardware manufacturing in the country by increasing value addition, encouraging technology development and Indian IP creation with a view to create domestic manufacturing capacity of USD 400 billion in the next 10 years,” the official notification said.

The country currently lags behind neighbouring countries like China and Japan in hardware development, although it has advanced considerably in software development globally.   This move would help bring the nation on par with the others.

According to DeitY, over the last couple of decades India has been the epicenter of consumer demand fuelled by a phenomenal GDP growth. While demand increased across all sectors, demand for high technology products, specifically electronic products has registered significant growth and going by current estimates, the demand for electronics hardware in the country is projected to increase from USD 45 billion in 2009 to USD 400 billion by 2020. 

Further, the estimated production will reach USD 104 billion by the year 2020, creating a gap of USD 296 billion in demand and production. This creates a unique opportunity for companies in the ESDM (Electronic System Design & Manufacturing) sector to look at India as their next destination to cater to the domestic Indian demand as well as act as an exports hub.

In keeping with this, the Government has initiated several initiatives for the development of electronics sector in the country. It has recently approved the National Policy on Electronics (NPE), its objectives being to achieve a turnover of about USD 400 Billion by 2020 involving investment of about USD 100 billion and employment to around 28 million by 2020.

Moreover, the policy also proposes setting up of over 200 Electronic Manufacturing Clusters.  Another important objective of the policy is to significantly upscale high-end human resource creation to 2500 PhDs annually by 2020 in the sector. (KNN)