NEW DELHI: The government is committed to offer an enabling environment and financial support to facilitate country’s telecom products exports, a top government official said.
“I would like to assure that the government is committed to facilitate exports to other parts of world,” Commerce Secretary Rita Teaotia said at the Telecom Equipment & Services Export Promotion Council event Friday. The government, Teaotia said will support through technology initiatives, enabling environment as well as through financial support for exports across the world.
The official said that the government will “certainly” engage in trade agreements with other countries to boost commerce and added that they are focusing to boost manufacturing and promote research and development (R&D) and setting high standards for products.
Industry analysts feel that the indigenous manufacturers are not getting desirable market access in India despite the Preferential Market Access (PMA) policy that mandates government departments to procure 30% locally.
“Telecom sector is the second most fiercely competitive sector in India. Manufacturing is a huge segment which is growing and time is not far when Indian IP will play a role in the production of advanced telecom equipment locally,” telecom secretary JS Deepak said.
Economists believe that telecom sector growing at 15% annually, followed by IT, would be the second top growing industry in the country, and according to estimates it would require at least 4 million skilled workforce by 2022.
“The ecosystem around telecom manufacturing is strengthening and multinational companies are increasingly establishing R&D centers in India,” Deepak said, adding that Indian manufacturers account for a small proportion of market, which he said would change in future.
Telecom sector, together with ambitious Digital India program, according to the official has a potential to contribute significantly to the India’s GDP. The New York-based research firm McKinsey in its study recently said that the adoption of key technologies across sectors spurred by the Digital India initiative could help boost India’s GDP by $550-billion to $ 1-trillion by 2025.
