Most opportune time for electronics sector: MAIT

With Central and State governments talking about ‘Digital India’ and ‘Make in India’, the Manufacturers’ Association for IT (MAIT) industry feels that it is a watershed moment for the electronics hardware sector.

It, however, feels that it’s time the government come out with standards and reform a procurement system riddled with archaic provisions.

“We are beginning to see opportunities like never before,” Debjani Ghosh, President of MAIT, told BusinessLine here on Thursday.

In Hyderabad for the three-day IT Asia conference, she said what was driving the opportunities was the huge technology consumption, which includes consumption of local technologies and products. “It’s no longer about low-cost devices like phones. We are seeing opportunities in Internet of Things, wearables and transportation.”

“As they embark on Digital India and Make in India in the country, they need to deploy a lot of infrastructure. This is can’t happen without technology. For this to happen, the country needed to reform policies to enable this,” she said.

Debjani, who is also Vice-President - Sales and Marketing Group and Managing Director - South Asia, Intel, said that immediate on the agenda must be reforms in procurement policies. “We need to standardise the requirements. There are different standards in different government agencies. Unless this is addressed, nothing can move.”

Nitin Kunkolienker, Vice-President of MAIT, said that there must be a country-wide effort to build systems that allowed seamless coordination between State and Central government agencies to provide the manufacturing industry a friendly atmosphere.

“We need to emerge a manufacturing hub. But it won’t happen overnight.

“We can build a trading hub first that allows players to come set up assembly units. It would lead to manufacturing ultimately,” he said.

Anwar Shirpurwala, Executive Director of MAIT, said the policy must encourage innovation.

“The present policy favours the bidder that quotes the lowest price where players in a similar field vie for it.

“But technology is about uniqueness. We need to change this. It is the biggest roadblock,” he felt.

The association is doing a project for the Telangana government to study and suggest measures to reform the procurement policy.

“We have asked them to come out with suggestions on the reforms to offer an industry-friendly procurement policy,” Jayesh Ranjan, IT Secretary in Telangana Government, has said.

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