Union Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology, Rajeev Chandrasekhar said that Chennai manufacturing unit of Pegatron, a contract manufacturer for Apple's iPhones, is another milestone in making India a global electronics manufacturing hub.

Addressing the inauguration of the facility, the minister said that it is a symbol of partnership between the centre and the states to help India achieve the target of $300 billion in electronics manufacturing, from the current $75 billion.

The plant has been set up by Taiwanese electronics major under the Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme, in an industrial park in Chengalpattu near Chennai.

Chandrasekhar said the PLI scheme has played a big role in ushering in investments and employment in electronics manufacturing. It has catalysed an investment of ₹6,500 crores in a short span of time, generating employment of over 40,000.

He added that schemes like Phased Manufacturing Programme (PMP) and PLI have propelled the mobile phone manufacturing industry to new heights. “Mobile phone exports in India in 2015-16 were near zero. They have reached around ₹50,000 crore. The country used to be heavily dependent on imports of mobile phones. In contrast, today, 97% of mobile phones used in India are products of domestic manufacturing."

Referring to Covid’s impact on the world economy, the minister said that the pandemic brought the same challenge to all countries, but the way India coped with it has drawn global respect. India has left the pandemic behind and is committed to becoming a trillion-dollar digital economy by 2026.