Cabinet OKs PLI for IT Hardware 2.0, more than doubles sops

NEW DELHI: The Cabinet has approved a revised production linked incentive (PLI) scheme for IT hardware, with an outlay of Rs 17,000 crore. As per Electronics Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, the tenure of the programme has been increased to 6 years and expected investment is Rs 2430 crore. He, however, said the way things are moving, the investment can be higher.

“Expected incremental production Rs 3.35 lakh crore and expected incremental direct employment is 75000. Overall, around 2 lakh jobs can be created with the scheme,” Vaishnaw said.

Highlighting the success of electronics manufacturing in India, the Minister said in FY23, India produced $105 billion worth of goods and over $10 billion mobile phones were exported.

The first version of the scheme has failed to take off, with only Dell and Bhagwati (Micromax) of the 14 approved companies meeting the first year’s (FY22) targets.

Companies have cited inadequate sops as the main reason for the failure of PLI 1.0 for IT hardware. Big players such as Samsung and Apple had given the scheme a miss altogether.

The industry welcomed the revised scheme.

"MAIT welcomes this long awaited announcement and thanks the government for bringing this much needed scheme to boost production of IT Hardware in India. We are confident that the revised Pli scheme as announced will boost manufacturing in India to both meet domestic demand as also boost export as has been achieved in the case of the mobile phone PLI," said Ali Akhtar Jafri, Director General, Manufacturers Association for Information Technology (MAIT) .

The first version of the scheme has failed to take off, with only Dell and Bhagwati (Micromax) of the 14 approved companies meeting the first year’s (FY22) targets.

Companies have cited inadequate sops as the main reason for the failure of PLI 1.0 for IT hardware. Big players such as Samsung and Apple had given the scheme a miss altogether.