“India not just manufacturing but doing it with precision”: Ashwini Vaishnaw hits back Congress

New Delhi [India]: Rubbishing remarks made by some Congress leaders that India was only assembling electronic equipment instead of indigenous manufacturing, Union Information Technology Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said on Thursday that it is not just only manufacturing but the country is doing complex manufacturing with sheer precision. 

“Since the launch of the Make in India programme nine years ago, the country has emerged as a major manufacturing destination. The manufacturing base is also leading to growth in exports,” the Union minister told reporters here. 

“They, the opposition leaders, must understand that ever since the country’s independence, the government of those periods, in a sense, had triangulated manufacturing. They never encouraged manufacturing. For them, manufacturing was never a priority and that is why so much potential of the country in terms of job creation in terms of exports was never met,” he said. 

India’s overall exports in the March-ended financial year 2022-2023 were worth USD 775.87 billion, a growth of over 14 per cent and almost USD 100 billion more than last year’s figures. 

Notably, in 2022-23, India’s merchandise exports were to the tune of USD 450.43 billion. In earlier periods, India was more into service exports and in recent years, merchandise exports too have been peaking. 

“The diversity of manufactured goods has significantly improved over the last nine and a half years.

Today, electrical equipment, machinery, machine components, electronic components, and so many other complex manufacturing processes are happening in India. They have today created a name for themselves in terms of quality as well as cost. And because of this, the exports of these exports from these industries is regularly and continuously going up,” said minister Vaishnaw. 

Citing a specific example about India’s mobile exports, the minister said USD 11 billion of USD 12.8 billion in telecom exports from India were mobile phones in 2022-23. 

This year, 2023-24, the export of mobile phones is likely to be about USD 15 billion. 

“That is the kind of growth that is happening. Similarly, we’ll find it in the case of pharmaceuticals. In the case of organic chemicals, in the case of auto components, and in the case of electronic components, everywhere the manufacturing base is increasing and because of the manufacturing base, growth in manufacturing and exports is also increasing,” the minister noted. 

Among the various steps the government took was to launch a production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme in varied sectors, including electronic goods, to make Indian manufacturers globally competitive, attract investments, enhance exports, integrate India into the global supply chain and reduce dependency on imports. These seemed to have reaped dividends.