Manufacturing is key government focus and hence, it is important to rationalize Import Duty to promote the on-ground manufacturing and not just assembling. This will enable greater access to better technology and will be a huge enabler to the ESDM industry to help provide superior technology to a wider audience at more competitive rates
By Ashok Chandak
Owing to the rising interest of businesses in the Internet of Things, Connected Cars, Security and wearable computing, the electronics and semiconductor industry is growing rapidly. With initiatives like ‘Make in India’ and ‘Digital India’, the country has observed an accelerated interest in localising the designs and manufacturing in ESDM space over the last 12 months along with other sectors. Several Indian and Global companies are showing a good amount of interest to setup the operations in India as Import still constitutes over 65% of the total electronic goods demand in India. With the trend of major reduction in exports from India, the initiatives to reduce import duty burden on electronics will help the foreign exchange reserves and also currency stability.
However, the momentum needs to be sustained with policy aggravation at various levels of manufacturing, operations and business. Therefore, Budget 2016 is highly awaited where everyone is expecting policy level improvements to expedite growth. Manufacturing is key government focus and hence, it is important to rationalize Import Duty to promote the on-ground manufacturing and not just assembling. This will enable greater access to better technology and will be a huge enabler to the ESDM industry to help provide superior technology to a wider audience at more competitive rates. With innovation and design being at the core of ‘Make in India’, we believe the government should promote R&D benefits to encourage more innovations from India and preference to Made in India products. Investment allowances for IT adoption can promote India as a premiere destination for both hardware and software development and hence, requires attention from the government. Early introduction of GST is also expected to bring a uniform taxation standard across India, which in return will boost the commercial transactions in the country and benefit both corporations and consumers.
Considering the large number of motor vehicle accidents in country, it is necessary to give major filip to the active safety. The regulations mandate on ABS , TPMS , Intelligent Transportation systems , Advanced driver assistance systems and Emission norms, would help to deploy technology and make the drives safer and more comfortable. Indian and global technology and auto companies are investing heavily to make ADAS and ITS a reality. While automakers are struggling with ways to protect their new and existing connected cars, there are technologies that can protect the privacy and security from the very start. The funding support for intelligent transport systems infrastructure and tax benefits for the ADAS , Digital Radio and Active Safety equipped vehicles would be very helpful in this direction. The government also needs to support promotion of the hybrid and electric vehicles and utilize technologies in order to promote innovation in the automotive space and reduce emissions in the country.
The Payment and Banking industry in India undergoing a major change in view of the major boom in e-Commerce and payment bank licences. While the security aspects have to be taken into account upfront. It is desirable to provide tax benefits for the cyber security, Secure Mobile Transactions, Chip based secure payment cards, Point of Sales terminals and infrastructures, to proactively address the end to end security needs of future and add to Make in India initiative. India is still struggling on the T & D losses. The mandate on the Smart Metering and Smart Grid in addition to smart cities initiatives will help not only the T & D losses but also help in having reliable and sufficient power to the citizens of the country.
In summary, the Government need to provide benefits and encouragement for enabling secure connections and secure infrastructure for a smarter India and deployment of the technology solutions that make lives easier, better and safer.
The author is Senior Director Global Sales and Marketing, NXP semiconductors
