Year End Specials: Electronic manufacturing investment rose 27% in 2017

As the year comes to an end, the Centre has revealed that a 27 per cent hike was witnessed in the investment on electronic manufacturing, with the total volume of investment at Rs 1.57 lakh crore in 2017, compared to Rs 1.43 lakh crore last year.

As per the data released by the Ministry of Electronics and IT, there has been almost 60 per cent rise in the production of mobile phones, with 17.5 crore units produced compared to 11 crore units last year. This has also added 4 lakh direct and indirect jobs in the sector.

The data also highlighted a 300 per cent growth in digital transactions during this year.

The smartphone revolution gained momentum this year, as India is now home to 40 crore users as compared to 30 crore in 2016. The number of internet users has grown from 40 crore in 2016 to 50 crore in 2017.

On the Aadhaar front, the ministry reported that the total number of Aadhaar account holders reached 119 crore in 2017, compared to 104 crore in last year. It has also aided more pensioners to register themselves on Jeevan Pramaan - the Aadhaar based platform for biometric authentication of the pensioners and senior citizens. Over 150.15 lakh pensioners have registered on the portal till date, which was 16.54 lakh in 2016, the data revealed.

Furthermore, a total of Rs 2.43 lakh crore has been disbursed through Aadhaar-based Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) to beneficiaries of 394 government schemes, which has led to savings of Rs 57,000 crore in the last three years by removing fictitious claimants. Through this process, a total of 2.33 crore bogus ration cards and three crore fake LPG connections were identified.

There are presently around 2.7 lakh Common Services Centres (CSCs) or digital service delivery networks active and offering services like Aadhaar enrolment, ticket booking of utilities and other eGovernance services to citizens from 1.68 lakh Gram Panchayats, the ministry noted.

Additionally, the ministry noted that there are 30 crore Jan Dhan Accounts so far, and 15 crore registrations have been received under Jan Suraksha Schemes.