Sedulity Groups News Update : Kapil Sibal: NTP, NPIT to be finalised by May

 NTP, NPIT to be finalised by May: Kapil Sibal

NEW DELHI: IT and Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal said National Policy on Electronics (NPE) likely to be approved this month. 
He further said National Telecom Policy (NTP) and National IT Policy ( NPIT) are likely to be finalised in May. 
"At the moment we have to have dialogue with the Planning Commission. Once that dialogue is over, we will send it (NPE) immediately to cabinet. If possible, hopefully, this should be done in this month itself," Sibal told reporters here. 
The Minister was speaking on the sidelines of the renaming ceremony of Department of Information Technology to Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DEITY). 
Meeting between Planning Commission and DEITY official was earlier scheduled for April 19 but it has now deferred to April 23, according to sources. 
Sibal said DEITY has started inter-ministerial consultation on National Policy on Information Technology and it should take three to four weeks for the process to get over. 
"We will launch that (NPIT) in May and hopefully telecom policy (NTP) will be also launched in May," Sibal said. 
According to draft of NPE ,which was put in public domain, the policy aims to promote domestic manufacturing of electronic products. The aim is to achieve a $400 billion turnover by 2020, involving investment of about $100 billion and employment to around 28 million people at various levels. 
As per estimates, demand in the Indian market was $45 billion in 2008-09 and is expected to reach $400 billion by 2020. The domestic production in 2008-09 was about $20 billion. The actual value-addition in the domestically produced electronic product ranges between 5 to 10 per cent in most cases.