‘India has potential to export double of the domestic consumption worth $100 billion’

India needs to strengthen its port sector by ensuring proper connectivity to the national highways to spur growth in the electronics manufacturing and export of final goods.

“Besides connecting ports in the country well, we need to establish good connectivity with global port hubs such as Salalah in order to get access to the markets in Africa and the Gulf region,” Nitin Kunkolienker, President of MAIT (Manufacturers’ Association of Information Technology), told BusinessLine .

With foreign companies moving out of China, India stood a good chance to emerge as an alternative manufacturing destination.

“We can become a good exporter player, too. Currently, we are exporting electronic goods worth $15 billion, which doesn’t reflect our true potential. We have the potential to export two-three times the size of domestic consumption of about $100 billion,” he said.

The government must start an Electronic Manufacturing Mission and promote industry-academia collaboration. “Much of the products that we export now are not value added. There is a huge scope for export of value-added products that bring in more revenues,” he said.

He said the academic institutions need to bring in design element to produce a workforce that help the electronics manufacturing industry move up the value chain.

Growth in consumption

The MAIT President said there would be a steep growth in consumption in the country in 2021-22 as the salaried class would begin to spend their pent up savings. “The government employees and those in the corporate sector accumulated savings as they could not go out during the pandemic. Now that vaccines are being introduced, we are confident that consumption will resume from this August onwards,” he said.

On the electronic manufacturing clusters that the government was promoting, the MAIT President felt that the management of clusters should be given to the entrepreneurs. “ Babu s (bureaucrats) should be kept out because the entrepreneurs can make the clusters a success. You hold them (entrepreneurs) accountable but the government must ensure there is no role for bureaucrats,” he felt.

Minimum wages

Stating that the practice of enforcing minimum wages legislation suited the requirements of a particular era in the past, he termed it a negative legislation. “We should do away with such negative legislations. We must promote manufacturing in a big way. It will trigger demand for human resources and ensure better wages,” he said.

“There won’t be any need for negative legislations when you make manufacturing sector more productive. When you add value, you automatically create demand for human resources,” he said.

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