India is planning to provide incentives worth Rs 18,000 crore ($2.2 billion) to boost local manufacturing in six new sectors, including chemicals, shipping containers, and vaccine inputs. This is part of the country s production-linked incentive scheme (PLI), which has so far seen limited success. The unused funds from the scheme will be allocated to the new sectors.
China supplies nearly three quarters of the worlds solar panels. It had an early mover advantage when it started to grow its solar industry more than a decade ago. It established an end-to-end supply chain — the country now makes most of the worlds polysilicon, a key material in solar panels.
India is set to begin production of advanced chemistry cell (ACC) batteries by January 2024, according to Union Minister Mahindra Nath Pandey. The government approved a scheme for manufacturing ACC batteries in May 2021, with an estimated cost of Rs 18,100 crore. ACCs are advanced energy storage technologies that can store and convert electric energy.