Govt makes renewed push to boost hardware manufacturing

The Union cabinet on Wednesday approved a six-year production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme for IT hardware, including laptops, tablets, personal computers, servers and edge computing devices, with an outlay of ₹17,000 crore.

- Rituraj Baruah & Gulveen Aulakh

Telecom minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said the scheme would attract top hardware companies such as HP, Dell and Apple to India.

“HP, Dell, Acer and others already have high volumes (market) in India. Apple is niche. The market is attractive; they’re also very seriously evaluating," he said in response to a question during a press briefing. Several companies welcomed the scheme, with some saying they are already evaluating availing of the scheme.

The revised scheme will offer an incentive of 5% on net incremental sales over the base year, of goods manufactured in India, compared to 2% earlier, where the base year can be chosen starting from will be FY23. The scheme also provides for flexibility as the investments can be done over six years, instead of four years earlier.

Companies signing up for the scheme will get an additional optional incentive-of another 3%-if they use Indiamade and designed components, sub-systems or inputs. Also, the companies can take Indian contract manufacturers on board and avail of incentives if the contractors are producing for a single company.