New Electronics Policy To Be Unveiled Soon: Union IT Secretary

The Union Government will soon roll out an electronics policy, which would envisage an electronics production target of US 400 billion by 2020, according to J Sathyanaryana, Secretary, Department of IT, Ministry of communications and IT, Government of India.

He spoke at the inaugural function of Indiasoft 2012, International IT exhibition and conferences, held in Hyderabad city from 21-23 March 2012. “The proposed policy will give equal importance to electronics manufacturing as is given in the case of software exports, so that this segment of the IT industry will get a boost and supplement and complement the overall exports from the country. The policy deliberations are at an advanced stage and hopefully it will be finalised shortly,” he added.

Dwelling on the vision of the Policy, Sathyanaryana said it would mainly focus on five areas, such as creation of an enabling eco-system for manufacture of electronics, thrust on exports, stress on human resource development for meeting the needs of the industry, lay down quality standards and would ensure cyber security. Stress on the manufacture of semi-conductors, creating more electronics manufacturing clusters, identify creation of IT investment centres for hardware and software development are the hallmark of the policy to provide a congenial IT eco system. In this regard, he disclosed that that the proposal for setting up ITIR in different parts of the country is at an advanced stage of clearance.

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Sathyanaryana said that the current year would clock an IT turnover of US$ 90 billion, putting together domestic consumption and exports. Regarding government spending on e-governance, he said that 31 mission modules have been set up to ensure the benefits of cutting edge technologies in IT were reaching out to the common man. The government spending on e-governance is increasing and so far US$ 8 billion has been committed for this purpose, which in turn could create many gainful employments in the IT sector. The Government’s plan was to move towards a paperless society and in this regard the ministries working will be digitised. Already, corporate affairs ministry has become paperless. Twenty-eight mainline databases are being set up in different parts of the country and 1500 educational institutions are going to be linked to make access to information and knowledge easier.

National Optical Fibre Network would connect 2.5 villages and would open up 100,000 information kiosks across the country to provide the base for the second sunrise revolution in IT, he added.
JK Dadoo, Joint Secretary, Department of Commerce, Ministry of Commerce and Industry said that the quantum of e-commerce in India would grow by 20 times from present level of US$ 300 million to close to US$ 20 billion in 5-7 years, aided by the increasing internet penetration in the country. He also flag marked India’s IT potential in areas like cloud computing, frugal engineering, satellite communications, production of affordable tablets, digital set-ups etc. The accelerated digitisation in ministries like Food, telecom, health, human resources will create million of gainful jobs in the country, he added.