India can create over 5 million jobs: MAIT ERSO Report

MAIT, the apex body representing India’s ICT and Electronics sector, launched a report, today, titled Electronic Hardware Repair Services Outsourcing (ERSO) at the Electronics & Telecom Manufacturing Summit 2021 (MAIT-ETMS).

The report makes strong recommendations to streamline and simplify procedures to make India a repair and refurbishment hub for IT and electronic products. It highlights the need to tap the repair market based on independent third-party research and analysis conducted by Lexport as knowledge partners.

Nitin Kunkolienker, President, MAIT, said the electronics repair industry has the potential of becoming an emerging sector for employment growth in India. “With the right regulatory support from the Government of India, the domestic repair service sector in India can experience a tremendous boost. It will thereby generate valuable FOREX revenue as well as create employment, especially during these COVID-19 times, which has made millions of Indians jobless.”

The report presents a comprehensive picture of the legal, policy and compliance-related amendments, recommendations and aims to request the government to consider the changes in policy measures and reform the repair and refurbishment service sector in India. It proposes that a Green Channel facility should be provided to the ERSO industry, without any custom duties. The report calls for a time bound logistic movement to avoid any delays at the custom port.

It recommends a Self-Certification regime so that any undesirable logistic delays can be avoided. The report also calls for Customs Duty Exemptions, Duty Free Scripts, stamp duty exemptions, tax holidays/exemptions, e-waste related exemptions etc; establishment of new repair units, wherein the government can provide subsidies, land at decent rates, electricity, water and other utilities should be provided at very reasonable rates. Moreover, it says that repair units should be incentivized based on the number of repairs undertaken by them for domestic as well as overseas customers.

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Furthermore, the report highlights background on the regulatory landscape and emphasizes bottlenecks and difficulties being faced day-to-day by the repair units in India, such as various regulatory approvals, import/export restrictions; investment and infrastructure cost; lack of skilled workforce and technology; and e-waste related constraints etc.