Bridling Growth of Electronics

IN recent years electronics sector in the country has achieved an unprecedented growth rate. In fact, it is often held that the general increase in the country's industrial output during the post -1980 period is not necessarily due to increase in industrial production across the board but due to the rapid growth of certain industries like electronics. The high output growth of electronics, in turn is attributed to a series of new policy measures initiated in the early 1980s These included (a) a policy on electronics components, (b) industrial and licensing policy for colour television (February 1983), (c) specific measures to further accelerate the rapid development of electronics (August 1983), (d) manufacture of telecommunications: relaxation of the then existing 100 per cent reservation of this sub-sector in the public sector (March 1984), (e) a new computer policy (November 1984), (0 an integrated policy measures in electronics (March 1985), (g) a computer software policy (December 1987) and so on. The new policy measures apart from ensuring greater play of market forces also ensured a series of fiscal measures including duty concessions and rationalisation of the duty structure.