DECEMBER 20239TOP STORIESNEW SCHEME FOCUSING ON MANUFACTURING IN DEVELOPMENTCOPPER DEMAND TO INCREASE BY 11 PERCENT OWING TO INFRASTRUCTURAL DEVELOPMENTThe government's focus now is to increase domestic power production and new plans are in the works to do so, a government official said on Dec 11. Speaking at the CII Electronic Summit, Electronics and IT Minister S Krishnan (Meity) said that 99 percent of the country's mobile phone market is in the domestic sector, and the level of future growth, companies need to improve their competitiveness and export. And improve added value."If our competitiveness needs to keep getting better, then the challenge really is to not just rely on about 10 to 15 percent of the value addition to assembly units in the country but to look at what else we can do, how can we move up in the value chain?" Krishnan said.He said no one country will ever own the entire value chain, and it will only be a portion of the value chain that India needs to target."Probably in India's case, the best case will probably be China, which has about 40 to 45 percent of the entire value chain, which is manufactured in China. We could possibly be thinking of about somewhere in the same region of 35 to 40 percent of the entire value chain," Krishnan said.He also said that the government is working on a second version of the incentive scheme for the electronics component -- Scheme for the Promotion of Manufacturing of Electronic Components and Semiconductors (SPECS)."Earlier MSIPS (modified special incentive package scheme) was launched. Now, SPECS 1.0 has been implemented for components. We are working on the next SPECS... That will be done after taking issues of the electronics industry into consideration," Krishnan said. ICRA said on Dec 12 that India's copper demands will increase by 11 percent this fiscal, due to the government's efforts to develop infrastructure and move towards green energy. The rating agency also said it expects a stable outlook for the country and the domestic sector.ICRA expects copper prices to remain at current levels of 8,200-8,300/tonne soon. he said in a statement.He also said that the allocation of Rs 1,00,000 crore for capital expenditure in the previous government budget, along with the ambitious targets set under the National Infrastructure Pipeline (NIP), will boost copper consumption in the medium term.Also, in the real estate sector, a significant 30 percent increase in India's six office markets and 10 percent growth in the commercial space is expected in FY24, which may favor the copper wire. ApplicationSignificant emphasis by the government on the smart city program, the defense sector, and the expected higher penetration of electric vehicles and their associated infrastructure bode well for the domestic copper demand outlook, Jayanta Roy, Senior Vice President and Group Head of Corporate Sector Ratings, ICRA, said."In addition, the government's ambitious target to achieve 500 GW of renewable energy capacity by 2032 would entail significant capacity addition in the transmission network, including for substations and electrical machinery, in the coming decade, translating into a healthy domestic copper demand," Roy said.
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