New Delhi, Feb 20 (IANS): The Union Cabinet on Tuesday passed the National Electronic Policy 2019 which targets $400 billion turnover by 2025 from domestic manufacturing, setting up cluster for the entire value chain and employing over 1 crore people directly or otherwise to achieve a growth rate of 32 per cent.

"We aim to target $400 billion turnover by 2025 and are targeting a growth rate of 32 per cent from the current 26.7 per cent globally in five years. With the new policy, the electronic manufacturing sector alone will provide employment to about 1 crore people", Ravi Shankar Prasad, IT minister, said in a briefing.

The electronics production growth rate was 5.5 per cent in 2015. In 2017-18, it rose to 26.7 per cent. In 2012-13, India's share in global electronics production was 1.31 per cent and has gone up to 3 per cent. When our government came to power, there were only two mobile factories. Now the number is 127 and if we add the components factories it will go up to 268. They employ 5 lakh people directly or indirectly.

The National Electronics Policy 2019 also aims at promoting ease-of-doing business for the electronic system design and manufacturing (ESDM) sector, and also encouraging industry-led research and development and innovation in all sub-sectors of electronics.

The policy aims to push the startup ecosystem in emerging technology areas, such as 5G, IoT, artificial intelligence and machine learning, and their applications in areas like defence, agriculture, health, smart cities and automation.

Being export-led, it will also help develop core competencies in all the sub-sectors of electronics, including electronic components and semiconductors, telecommunication equipment, medical electronics, defence electronics, automotive electronics, industrial electronics, strategic electronics, and chip design.

The policy targets production of one billion mobile handsets by 2025, valued at $190 billion, including export of 600 million mobile handsets valued at $110 billion.