India makes immense progress in steel electronics, IT sectors: V K Singh
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Minister of State for Road Transport and Highways V K Singh said that India has made immense progress in the steel, electronics and IT sectors and attained significant spots in these areas globally. He stated in the last 9 years, India became the second largest steel producing nation globally and had a steel making capacity of 161 million tonnes (MT) in FY 2023. He said At 161 MT, the installed steel capacity was 58 per cent higher from 102 MT in FY 2013-14. The country made a progress on the demand side as well. From per capita steel consumption of around 59 kilogrammes earlier, today the per capita steel consumption is at around 86 kgs, up 46 per cent.
Moreover, he said exports in steel rose to 6.72 MT from 5.98 MT in the comparative year. While the imports rose to 6.02 MT from 5.45 MT in FY 2013-14. The government also took several measures to boost the domestic production of steel by introducing Rs 6,322 crore production linked incentive (PLI) scheme and National Steel Policy (NSP) which envisages to scale up the production capacity to 300 MT by 2030 and per capita steel consumption to around 160 kgs.
Talking about electronics sector, he said the production of mobile phones has risen from about 6 crore in 2014-15 to about 32 crore in 2021-223. The export of mobile handsets from India increased from over Rs 1,566 crore in FY 2014-15 to Rs 35,696 crore in FY 2021-22. The value of export of mobile phones in FY 2022-23 (till Jan 2023) stood at Rs 68,605 crore. From just 2 mobile phone factories in 2014, India now has become the second largest mobile phone producer in the world.
India has almost 120 crore mobile connections, among which a major chunk are smartphones. The demand started growing throughout the first decade of the new millennium, and it exploded in 2016 when the per GB data price became as low as Rs 10, making India a global leader in cheap internet accessibility and penetration. In the area of IT, he said more than 21,800 government services are being provided from 300-plus central and state departments to over 5 crore users through UMANG, improving ease-of-living for citizens with just a few clicks. More than 136 crore Aadhaar have been issued.
