Greetings from Project SESEI!

Dear Readers,

With immense pleasure we bring to you the twelfth edition of our “SESEI Newsletter Europe” in a new design and format. The focus of our Newsletter remains on bringing important and latest updates and information around policy & regulatory decisions and standards development activities being carried out in India around our project priority sectors.

While WTO with its members have decided to start negotiations to put in place global rules on e-commerce. India has released its Draft national e-commerce policy, which aims to provide a policy framework that shall enable India to benefit from rapid digitisation of the domestic, as well as global economy.

India also released its much awaited National Policy on Electronics 2019 through its Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY). This policy aims to position India as a global hub for Electronics System Design and Manufacturing (ESDM) and create an enabling environment for the industry to compete globally. Another important step towards boosting the local manufacturing under its Make in India program is the prohibition of Importing many electronics and information technology (IT) products without Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) registration. This decision was taken to tighten quality controls for electronic products and as well to curb the rising import of cheap electronic items.

Similar move has also been witnessed in the automotive sector where the Government has notified phased increase in basic customs duty to 15% from April 2020 and 10% on imported lithium-ion cells by April 2021 on parts of electric passenger vehicles which is to be assembled in India to promote domestic manufacturing of EVs. This notification also entails doubling the basic customs duty on completely built units of electric buses and trucks to 50% from April 2020.

The Government of India has also announced the 2nd phase of FAME India phase II scheme which will be implemented from April 2019 with a total outlay of Rs 10,000 Crores (about €1.25 billion) over the period of three years (i.e. from 2019-20 to 2021-22).

The World Bank has committed to provide India funds worth $300 million to aid its energy efficiency programme. The move will help the government set up the requisite infrastructure to push forward its ambition of expanding e-mobility in the country. Niti Aayog - the think tank of Indian government is working on an Information Technology Enabled Services (ITeS) policy to introduce intelligent transport system in the country in the wake of increasing road fatalities. Niti Aayog is also working on many initiatives towards transportation, where the idea is to have seamless, connected, shared, digitalized and zero-emission free mobility. These initiatives are comparable to the intelligent transport and clean mobility programme of the European Commission.

5G, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Blockchain are the main technologies of great emphasis by the Indian government in the ICT sector. Telecom Engineering Centre (TEC) has been asked to finalize standards for IoT/M2M such as oneM2M. India is also aspiring to roll out 5G services at par with the rest of the world. National program on AI will be launched shortly, which intends to establish a National Centre for AI in India. IIT Madras in collaboration with Germany-based Bosch has also opened Data Science (DS) and AI centre.

Both India and Europe are serious about their commitment towards the Paris agreement. A publication on climate action titled 'India - Spearheading Climate Solutions' was released by the Ministry of Environment. This publication is the progress report of the Indian initiatives on climate control and mentions the key actions India has taken under various sectors towards combating and adapting to climate change.

Space technology is an interesting area of growing collaboration between India and EU. Both India and EU are collaborating for past four years while working together in the space sector on Copernicus and Galileo, the EU’s flagship Earth observation and navigation programmes, respectively.

As you will read through the newsletter you will realize that there are many similarities between EU and India in focus and approach on key issues such as energy requirements, clean technologies, intelligent transport and new ICT technologies.

Apart from the interesting news we have brought details of the important events and seminars which will be happening in India and if interested details of the draft standards released by BIS, ARAI and TSDSI.

We are eagerly awaiting to receiving your comments and suggestions on the new Newsletter.

Happy Reading once again.