11 crore mobiles made in India: Govt

Made in India mobiles have doubled from.4 crore in 2014-15 to 11 crore units in 2015-16, telecom and IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said on Monday.

The incentives offered in the last budget has encouraged local manufacturing, with 16 new plants set up for making mobile phones locally during the financial year.

"Due to the initiatives taken up in the last budget, especially duty rationalisation, we have notice a remarkable acceleration in field of electronics manufacturing," Prasad said

The minister added that electronics manufacturing proposals worth Rs 1,290,294 Crores were received till date, up from Rs 11,800 crore in June 2014, when the government came to power. "Proposals worth Rs 18,000 crore have been approved," the minister said.

Welcoming the new proposal of duty advantage of 8.5% to routers, broadband modems and set top boxes, digital video recorder and CCTV cameras among other products in the Union Budget, the minister said the move will give a boost to the telecom sector, which uses many of these products.

Domestic value addition in mobile phones, battery, wired headsets, speakers would enjoy a duty advantage of 10.5% compared to imported goods, the minister added.

"We're happy to note that FM has announced moving a legislation to give statuary backing to Aadhar, for delivery of services, subsidies, benefits coming out of Consolidated Fund of India," he said.

The minister also said that India's share in the global IT outsourcing has increased to 56%, while the services export has crossed $100 billion in the last 20 months.

Image credit: Indiatimes