How the PLI Scheme for telecom is a key factor for Digital India

The Government is determined to make India “Atmanirbhar” with world-class manufacturing infrastructure and transform it into a competitive global manufacturing destination. The Government had introduced aggressive duty reforms, various incentive schemes to encourage domestic manufacturing and reduce the import bills. However, the Government realised that the above measures were insufficient to compensate local disabilities faced by the Indian manufacturers compared to the international compete destinations.

To counter the above, the Government’s think tank rejigged the entire incentive regime to be more focused on critical and import heavy sectors. The new incentive regime called the Production Linked Incentive (PLI) schemes was conceived to create champions in large sectors and a sizeable budget of Rs 1.97 lakh crore was allocated towards the same in the Union Budget 2021-22. The announcement covered 13 sunrise sectors comprising of Electronics, Pharma, Telecom, IT hardware, Batteries, Auto etc. Of the 13 sectors, the Government strongly focused on the Telecom sector due to the recent security concerns and excessive import dependence. Keeping this in mind, the PLI scheme for telecom & networking products was notified on 24 February 2021 with a huge budgetary outlay of Rs 12,195 crore.