PIB Tracker29 more electronics components projects cleared
MeitY approves a fresh batch under the Electronics Components Manufacturing Scheme — including India's first rare-earth permanent magnet plant, its first tantalum-capacitor plant, and its first flexible-PCB plant.
What happened
- The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) has cleared 29 fresh proposals under the Electronics Components Manufacturing Scheme (ECMS), the central-sector scheme that subsidises India's missing components layer.
- The new batch carries a projected investment of ₹7,104 crore, projected production of ₹84,515 crore, and is expected to create 14,246 direct jobs.
- It follows an earlier round of 46 applications worth ₹54,567 crore; with the two rounds combined, 75 applications now stand approved under ECMS, drawing an expected ₹61,671 crore of investment and 65,040 direct jobs.
- The 29 cover 16 product lines with cross-sectoral use — mobile, telecom, consumer electronics, strategic electronics, automotive and IT hardware: one sub-assembly (display modules), eleven bare components, three supply-chain inputs, and capital goods and their parts.
- Three national firsts are inside this batch: the country's first Rare Earth Permanent Magnet facility (Lohum Cleantech, making magnets from rare-earth oxide), its first SMD-passive plant for tantalum-based capacitors, and its first Flexible PCB plant.
- Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw flagged four priorities for the sector — in-house design capability, a robust domestic supply chain with preference for indigenous capital equipment, Six Sigma quality programmes, and 4–5 workforce-training centres each able to train at least 5,000 people.
Background & context
India became a giant in assembling electronics — phones, in particular — long before it made the parts inside them. The Production-Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme for large-scale electronics, launched in 2020, pulled global mobile assembly to India and lifted phone exports sharply. But the value that India captured stayed thin, because the high-value components — display modules, capacitors, connectors, printed circuit boards, camera modules, magnets — were still imported. ECMS is the policy designed to fill exactly that gap: it moves the incentive one layer upstream, from assembling the finished device to manufacturing the components and the sub-assemblies that go into it.
The Electronics Components Manufacturing Scheme was approved by the Union Cabinet and notified by MeitY in 2025, with an original outlay in the order of ₹22,919 crore and a roughly six-year operating window. It is a central-sector scheme — fully funded by the Union government, not shared with the States — administered by MeitY, the same nodal ministry that runs the electronics PLI and the Semicon India programme. Its stated aim is to develop a domestic components and sub-assembly ecosystem, deepen value addition inside the country, and integrate Indian firms into global supply chains by offering a mix of turnover-linked, capital-expenditure-linked and hybrid incentives depending on the category of component. ICEA Chairman Pankaj Mahindroo noted at this announcement that the latest Union Budget raised the ECMS outlay to ₹40,000 crore, a near-doubling that signals how central the components push has become to the manufacturing agenda.
ECMS therefore sits in a family of MeitY-run industrial-policy instruments aimed at electronics self-reliance: the PLI for large-scale electronics manufacturing (the assembly layer), the Semicon India Programme with its Modified Scheme for Setting up Semiconductor Fabs / Display Fabs and the SPECS-successor support for chip design and assembly-test-mark-pack (ATMP/OSAT), and now ECMS for the passive and active components that bridge the bare chip and the finished gadget. Read together they describe a deliberate march down the value chain — from "Made-in-India phones assembled here" toward "Made-in-India parts inside them." It also continues the lineage of an earlier, narrower instrument — the Scheme for Promotion of Manufacturing of Electronic Components and Semiconductors (SPECS) — which first tried to seed the components base on a much smaller scale; ECMS can be read as its far larger successor in intent.
The categories the scheme rewards matter for how a student should picture it. The release sorts the parts into a sub-assembly (a display module — a finished screen package, the costliest single part of a phone), bare components (the discrete passive and active pieces — capacitors, resistors, inductors, connectors, relays, antennas, heat sinks, Li-ion cells, the surface-mount-device or SMD passives, and flexible printed circuit boards), and supply-chain items (the upstream materials that feed those — laminates, metallised films, and rare-earth magnets). Layered on top is a deliberate capital-equipment category, because a components industry that imports all of its tooling and machines is not truly self-reliant. That four-way structure — sub-assembly, bare component, supply-chain material, capital good — is the cleanest way to remember what ECMS covers.
For Prelims
- Full name: Electronics Components Manufacturing Scheme (ECMS) — note the wording; the release uses both "Component" and "Components," so either spelling may appear.
- Nodal ministry: Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY). Administering chain: Union Cabinet approves → MeitY notifies and runs → applications approved batch-wise by MeitY.
- Scheme type: central-sector (100% Union-funded), not centrally-sponsored — there is no State cost-share.
- Outlay: launched at roughly ₹22,919 crore; raised to ₹40,000 crore in the latest Union Budget (per ICEA at this announcement).
- This batch: 29 proposals · ₹7,104 cr investment · ₹84,515 cr projected production · 14,246 direct jobs.
- Cumulative to date: 75 applications approved · ₹61,671 cr investment · 65,040 direct jobs (= the earlier 46 worth ₹54,567 cr + these 29).
- 16 product lines: 1 sub-assembly (Display Modules); 11 bare components (Antennas, Capacitors, Connectors, Heat Sinks, Li-ion Cells, Relays, Resistors, Transducers, SMD Passives, Flexible PCB, Inductors); 3 supply-chain items (Laminates, Metallized films for capacitors, Rare Earth Permanent Magnets); plus Capital Goods and their parts.
- Three national firsts in this batch: 1st Rare Earth Permanent Magnet plant (Lohum Cleantech — from rare-earth oxide) · 1st SMD-passive plant for tantalum capacitors · 1st Flexible PCB plant.
- Named recipients to recall: Display modules — Dixon Display Technologies, Wangda Technologies; Heat sinks — VVDN Technologies; Connectors — Molex, Amphenol FCI, SFO Technologies, Terminal Technologies; Capacitors — Vishay Components; Inductors — TDK India; Flexible PCBs — Syrma Strategic Electronics; Li-ion cells — Munoth Lithium Battery; Rare-earth magnets — Lohum Cleantech.
- Key fact: a copper-clad laminate is the base material for PCB manufacturing and makes up about 30% of a PCB's bill of materials — which is why laminates were brought into the supply-chain list.
- Capital-equipment push: approvals to 6 entities — Titan Engineering & Automation, NeST Advanced Technology Development Centre, ASM Technologies, Indo-MIM, Bharat FIH, IFB Industries.
What ECMS is NOT: it is not the same as the PLI for large-scale electronics — PLI subsidises assembly of finished devices, ECMS subsidises the components inside them. It is not the Semicon India / fab programme — that funds semiconductor chip fabrication and packaging, whereas ECMS funds passive and discrete components and sub-assemblies. It is not a centrally-sponsored scheme — there is no State share. And the rare-earth magnet plant here makes magnets from rare-earth oxide; it is not a rare-earth mining or oxide-extraction project.
Why it matters
The components layer is where India's electronics story was leaking value and exposing strategic risk. A phone assembled in India still carried a foreign display, foreign capacitors, foreign connectors and a foreign magnet — so the import bill and the supply-chain dependence stayed high even as export headlines improved. By incentivising these specific parts, ECMS attacks the value-addition problem directly: more of each device's cost is captured domestically, and the deep, unglamorous "bill of materials" — laminates, films, passives, inductors — starts to be made at home.
The rare-earth permanent magnet first is the headline strategic gain. These magnets are critical inputs for EV motors, wind turbines, defence systems, speakers and hard drives, and global supply is heavily concentrated — making indigenous magnet capacity a question of economic security, not just industrial policy. MeitY Secretary S. Krishnan framed the wider point: in the present geopolitical situation, the goal is "resilient, diversified supply chains," with the open frontier now in capital equipment and upstream inputs. The scheme's design choices — pulling in laminates (≈30% of a PCB's BoM) and dedicating approvals to capital goods makers — show an attempt to build not just components but the machines and materials that make components, so the ecosystem is not hollow underneath.