The Hindu Business Line : Tariff on 217 IT products to go: PM

The Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, said that the Government will follow a `forward-looking policy regime' to encourage the electronics, information and communication technology sector which holds promise for the country.

In this direction, the Government will announce a policy soon for the support of the semiconductor industry, a manufacturing policy for electronics and information technology hardware, do away with tariffs on 217 information technology items as agreed at the WTO and enable skilled manpower resource for the industry by upgrading education and training.

Inaugurating the Flextronics Industrial Park for the manufacture of mobile phones at Sriperumbudur, near Chennai, he said that it was essential to develop semiconductor fabrication capabilities to support the growth of the information and communication technology sector.

A study by the Indian Semiconductor Association has indicated that the domestic electronics and information technology market will grow to $363 billion by 2015 from $28 billion last year. A major part of this growth will be hardware including semiconductor chips.

Mobile phones were no longer a luxury, the Prime Minister said. They have contributed to the incomes of farmers, petty traders, urban and rural service providers and increased the productivity of white collar employees. As mobile infrastructure extends into rural areas there will be a greater penetration of mobile telecom services.

Motorola-Foxconn is expected to invest another $500 million here, Dr Singh said.

The telecom sector is booming. By 2010 there would be over 500 million telephones, 40 million Internet users and 20 million broadband users, he said.

Dr Singh said that growth in the mobile phone sector is also expected in other sectors such as personal computers, DTH television networks, and related areas. The Government will encourage new investments, create new employment and generate new business opportunities. The SEZ policy is favourable to electronic firms and the proposed manufacturing policy would make firms more competitive.

To tackle shortage of employees with essential skills due to the rapid growth of the sector, the Government will set up a mission on vocational education to address the need for skilled human resource. The higher education system would be expanded to provide better quality technical graduates to the industry, he said.

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