V Narayanan, the chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), on Thursday stated that the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) ought to set down a roadmap for reduction of electronics imports and indigenous manufacturing.
He emphasized the need to bring electronics imports down to less than 10% in the next five years, emphasizing that the electronics community must take companies along in manufacturing it indigenously. Remembering his time as the director of the Liquid Propulsion Systems Centre (LPSC) of ISRO, Narayanan said that from the 34 sensors used to measure pressure, temperature and hydrogen levels, only two were manufactured in India, while the remaining 32 were imported.
"When you talk about a launch vehicle today, 90% of it consists of indigenous items, but 10% is still imported. Out of that 10%, 90% consists only of electronic parts,” the chairman said while speaking at the Nano Electronics Roadshow at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) Bengaluru on Thursday.
“I set a rule that after one year, no sensors would be approved for import. Today, I am happy to report that 32 of them have been indigenously developed and are ready for technology transfer,” he said, hoping that within the next 10 to 15 years, the import content of electronics in India should come down drastically.