In a big win for the Centre's 'Make in India' initiative, the monthly mobile phone exports from India crossed $1 billion mark for the first time in September, reports Economic Times.
The mobile phone exports received a boost from the government's production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme, which encouraged major global and local smartphone makers including Apple and Samsung to increase local manufacturing for both, domestic and international, markets.
According to the ET report, mobile phone shipments more than doubled to $4.2 billion between April and September 2022, from just $1.7 billion during the same period in 2021.
The previous biggest monthly exports of smartphones from the country was in December last year, when handsets worth $770 million were exported.
From June to August of this year, exports were roughly around $700 million per month.
According to the data available with ET, the estimated value of mobile phone exports increased by more than 200 per cent from September 2021 to September 2022.
In 2016–17, only over 1 per cent of mobile phone production in India was exported, which increased to almost 16 per cent in 2021–22, according to ICEA data.
The mobile exports are expected to increase to almost 22 per cent of production in 2022–2023, the ICEA predicts.