The Indian government recently confirmed that it will provide subsidies to 27 international technology hardware manufacturing giants to promote the development of the domestic electronics manufacturing industry. This news was reported by the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post on the 20th. According to the official statement of the Indian government on the 18th, IT hardware manufacturers including Dell, HP, Lenovo, and Foxconn, among 27 companies, have been approved for the Indian governments Production-Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme. Among them, 23 companies are ready to start production immediately, while the other 4 companies will start production within 90 days.

Ashwini Vaishnaw, Minister of Electronics and Information Technology of India, said that the 27 approved applications are expected to bring nearly 30 billion rupees (about 360 million US dollars) in investment. This move is expected to create about 50,000 direct jobs and 150,000 indirect jobs in India. In addition, the output value of Indias information technology hardware is expected to reach 42 billion US dollars.

According to a report by US CNBC, this PLI program has a budget of 170 billion rupees (approximately $2 billion) over 6 years, covering products such as laptops, tablets, micro personal computers and servers. Initially launched in 2020, the PLI program is regarded by the Indian government as a key strategy to make India a global electronics manufacturing hub, with a target of achieving $300 billion in total output value by 2026. The program currently covers 14 major manufacturing sectors in India.

However, Indian news website The Wire points out that the PLI program still has some shortcomings. As of March 2023, only 29 billion rupees (approximately $340 million) of funds had been disbursed under the program. Indian government officials stated they would review the program to identify deficiencies. Although the PLI program has not fully met expectations, its noteworthy that India has successfully attracted Apple to assemble phones locally. However, controversies surrounding quality issues of India-made iPhones persist. India-made Apple phones have quality issues, with about 50% of produced iPhone casings being rejected, Indias Firstpost reported in February about quality problems with India-made Apple phones. According to reports, about 50% of phone casings produced by Indias Tata Company failed Apples quality control tests.

In addition, the number of enterprises willing to set up production in India is still limited. In May this year, the Indian government announced an increase in the subsidy scale to 2 billion US dollars. However, due to the poor effect, the Indian government had to extend the deadline for applications to August 30th.

Despite the challenges, Indias electronics manufacturing and mobile phone export industries still show a certain upward trend. Indias Economic Times reported that from April to August this year, Indias mobile phone exports almost doubled, reaching 5.5 billion US dollars. At the same time, the total output value of Indias electronics manufacturing industry exceeded 150 billion US dollars.