Sam Pitroda Says India Still Dependent On Imports For Electronic Hardware.

Sam Pitroda, telecom advisor to Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh, on Monday highlighted India's dependence on electronic hardware imports.

Pitroda said India's inability to excel in hardware has till now been attributed to the country's poor manufacturing capability.

"We are all very concerned that on the one hand we export 70 billion dollars of software but we import 40 to 50 billion dollars of electronic hardware. We produce very little electronic hardware in the country," Pitroda told mediapersons here.

"Lot of our hardware even for telecom comes from abroad, and if we continue at this pace, our import bill for hardware would be as much as the petroleum import bill," he added.

Pitroda further said the setting up of semiconductor plants in the country is still underway, and added that India is a favourable destination for producing semiconductor chips.

Pitroda said the telecom sector has taken massive strides, with the mobile phone user base rising from 200 million to 800 million over a decade.

"Our market has matured. A decade back, we had 200 million cell phones or even less and now we have 800 million cell phones. If we just look at the cell phone replacement market, it is huge. So from our perspective, smart phone market, laptops, power electronics, auto electronics today offers huge opportunities," he added.

An empowered committee has been set up to identify technology and investors for semiconductor wafer fabrication manufacturing facilities in the country.

The committee will assess and recommend how much government aid should be taken for these facilities. It will have to submit its recommendations to the government by end of July 2011.

Source : dailyindia.com