ICEA National President Pankaj Mohindroo speaks about the current status of mobile handset and component manufacturing in India at a press briefing in Delhi. (Express photo by Anuj Bhatia) ICEA National President Pankaj Mohindroo speaks about the current status of mobile handset and component manufacturing in India at a press briefing in Delhi. (Express photo by Anuj Bhatia)

India’s bid to become a major mobile phone manufacturing powerhouse seems to be working with the Indian Cellular and Electronics Association (ICEA) claiming on Wednesday that over the past four and half years 268 mobile handset and component manufacturing factories have been set up in the country resulting in over 6.7 lakh jobs. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had kicked off the “Make in India” initiative in 2014 with the aim to encourage domestic mobile phone manufacturing in the country.

“This is a very good situation. Other than the well-known companies which we all know about like Apple, Samsung, LG, Oppo and Vivo, there is a whole lot of medium enterprises which have come into manufacturing,” ICEA National President Pankaj Mohindroo told reporters here. In fact, most of the new factories have come up in the last few months.

As per the detailed physical survey conducted by ICEA, the Delhi-NCR region has about 30 mobile handset manufacturing units, followed by Uttar Pradesh with 27, Haryana with 15, Maharashtra 14 and Uttrakhand 9. Delhi-NCR tops the ranking with 18 battery pack factories, followed by UP with 14, Haryana with 13, Himachal Pradesh with 7 and Maharashtra with 4. The survey further found that UP has about 39 factories dedicated to chargers/adapters, followed by Delhi with 24, Haryana with 18, Maharashtra with 12 and Uttrakhand with 10.

The growing mobile manufacturing activity has saved the country an estimated Rs 3 lakh crore in foreign exchange in lieu of import substitution and created and domestic value addition, he further added. The mobile handset and component manufacturing ecosystem is growing in India. In 2017-18, an estimated 225 million handsets were assembled/manufactured in India.

India recently replaced Vietnam to become second largest producer of mobile phones in the world. The India Cellular and Electronics Association (ICEA) expects the total number of mobile handset and component manufacturing units will increase to 1,800 and generate 50 lakh jobs by 2025.

While Mohindroo is optimistic about the growth of mobile handset and components manufacturing in India, he said there are still a number of challenges that need to be addressed. “The industry faces serious challenges in terms of lack of a competitive corporate tax regime, lack of ready to move infrastructural facilities to start production activity from the word ‘GO’ etc, the Government must undertake expeditious measures to address these pressing challenges through suitable regulatory/ incentivisation interventions.”

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