India To Offer $6.6 Billion To Attract Smartphone Manufacturers

India, looking to attract more global investments in the manufacture of mobile phones, is offering financial incentives and a wealth of plug-and-play facilities, Bloomberg reports.

The government plans to focus initially on a few big companies, targeting them with up to 6 percent incentives on sales for goods made in the country for the next five years, along with a 25 percent incentive for the production of electronic components and semiconductors, among other parts, according to the ministry for electronics and information technology.

There will be ready-to-use facilities for electronic manufacturing clusters available to those companies as well, Bloomberg reports.

Ravi Shankar Prasad, minister for electronics and information technology, touted the potential of India to become a new world leader for manufacturing mobile phone technology, as he spoke at a press conference in New Delhi on Tuesday (June 2).

The local value addition in electronics manufacturing is expected to rise to 40 percent by 2025 with the incentives, and the offering of facilities will help companies bring along ancillary units.

By utilizing this system, India has the potential to add half a million jobs, Prasad said at the press conference.

Recent global events, including the coronavirus pandemic and the trade war between the U.S. and China, has had India considering ways to become less dependent on other world powers. Prime Minister Narendra Modi said he wanted to see the country become more self-reliant, and for more local jobs to be created to help stimulate the economy. The country has since set about trying to woo more global companies to do business there.

One example of the new influx of outside companies can be seen in Google’s entry into the country’s grocery delivery services market as the tech giant partnered with startup Dunzo. The grocery delivery service, as in other parts of the world, has blossomed in India as people stayed home to practice social distancing during the pandemic in March and April.