CHENNAI: India is aiming to triple the growth of the electronics sector in four years time, with the total production of electronics in the country having overtaken imports and grown by 17-18% over the years, with the majority of growth in the mobile phone industries, according to S Krishnan, secretary of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology.
Delivering the 10th G Ramachandran Endowment Lecture at the Madras School of Economics on 'Building Economic Resilience Through Technology' on Saturday, Krishnan said that the size of the digital economy is about $350 billion of which $100 billion is electronics. Digital economy’s share of the national economy is 8-10% and it is set to reach 20% once the economy hits $5 trillion.
Urging TN to emulate the success of the automobile sector by becoming the hub of electronic component manufacturing, the MeitY secretary said the country is vying for a larger share in the global electronics market which is dominated by China. Currently, India's share stands at a mere 3%, he noted.
Krishnan said that the overall share of electronics in India's GDP needs to go up. He added that the signing of the Information Technology Agreement in 1997 strongly impacted the domestic electronic market due to which many of the brands present at the time are no longer in existence. "It was not an unwise policy for the period. What it did was to improve availability of IT products. This resulted in the growth of IT and ITES sector," he added.
He also noted that electronic component manufacturers should ensure the country's security interests. "'Secure by design' is something we have to ensure right from the time of designing a product. You (manufacturers) design it in a way the country's security interests are taken care of," he said.