India has received proposals worth Rs.21,000 crore from companies under the Union government’s Make in India programme, information technology and communications minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said on February 11. Of this, Rs.6,000 crore of proposals have already been cleared, Prasad told the annual summit in Mumbai of industry lobby Nasscom. “During my visits to Germany and South Korea, the companies I met had shown interest in investing in India,” said Prasad. “We have got proposals worth Rs.21,000 crore and we have already cleared Rs.6,000 crore worth of proposals.” The National Democratic Alliance government has been trying to attract foreign manufacturers to “come, make in India,” in the words of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, as part of attempts to boost manufacturing’s share of economic output from the 15% level at which it has stagnated for decades. Outlining just one particular challenge, a report by Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu India Pvt. Ltd said that while demand for electronics hardware is rapidly increasing in India and is projected to rise to $400 billion by 2020, domestic production is expected to reach only $104 billion. If India doesn’t move to reduce the widening gap, the country’s electronics import bill may surpass its oil import bill by 2020, some analysts have warned. Last year in September, Prasad met executives at German companies such as Bosch GmbH, Osram Licht AG, Rohde and Schwarz GmbH and Co. KG, Giesecke and Devrient GmbH, Von Ardenne Anlagentechnik GmbH, Infineon Technologies AG and Coriant GmbH and Co. KG. A month later he visited South Korea to meet executives from companies like Samsung Electronics Co. and LG Electronics.