Bhatia further added, “The telecom equipment manufacturing in India has achieved the highest ever growth in 2007-08 and was estimated at Rs 41,270 crores compared to Rs 23,700 crores during 2007-08. The production in 2008-09 is expected to cross Rs 50,000 crores and will reach 51,800 crores.”
According to TEMA, the increased production of wireless equipment to meet the demands of the cellular operators and consumers is mainly instrumental for driving higher production of telecom equipment in 2007-08.
Bhatia also mentioned, “While production of telecom equipment is estimated to go up from Rs 41,270 crores in 2007-08 to Rs 51,800 crores in the current financial year, the growth rate of telecom equipment production is expected to come down from an all-time high of 71 per cent in 2006-07 to about 27-30 per cent in the current year.”
This year, the highest increase has been recoded in wireless equipment manufacturing including cellular phones where the production has gone up from Rs 10,545 crores in 2006-07 to Rs 28,600 crores, recording a 171 per cent growth. However, this year the expected production from the wireless equipment market including cellular phones is estimated to be Rs 41,650 crores with a growth rate of 46 per cent. The impressive growth in wireless equipment market comes from integrated manufacturing plants set up near Chennai at Sriperumbudur by global wireless majors including Nokia and Motorola and in other states by LG, Samsung and Sony Ericsson.
Sriperumbudur is leading India’s transformation into a global telecom manufacturing hub which is being dubbed as India’s equivalent of China's Shenzhen.
The performance on the wireline equipment production is, however, not very encouraging due to reduced demand from operators. The wireline equipment production has gone down from Rs 13,100 crores to 11,780 crores and is further expected to fall down to Rs 9,450 crores this fiscal year.
Only the silver lining is the production of optical fibre cables which increased from Rs 446 crores in 2006-07 to Rs 534 crores in 2007-08 and is further expected to increase to Rs 609 crores in 2008-09.
While commenting on the cable industry, Rahul Sharma, vice president, TEMA, said, “The cable industry is passing through a difficult phase with complete slump in demand for the jelly-filled telephone cables, and TEMA has asked the government to announce a special package of incentives to boost the wireline industry.” |
