The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) is considering a review of the Public Procurement (Preference to Make in India) or PPP-MII policy to attract more manufacturers to the Indian telecom sector. However, the Global Trade Research Initiative (GTRI) has raised concerns that any dilution of the policy could disproportionately benefit multinational corporations (MNCs) like Cisco, Ericsson, and Nokia, potentially at the expense of Indian companies such as Tejas Networks, HFCL, and Centre for Development of Telematics (C-DOT), which have invested heavily in domestic research and development (R&D), intellectual property, and manufacturing.
In a stakeholder consultation notice issued on June 3, 2025, the DoT said it would review specific elements of the policy. These include the list of eligible products, product-wise local content thresholds, particularly the ceiling for design-based local content, the eligibility of inputs like design as local content, and the method of calculating local content for software products.
Under the existing framework, a supplier must meet a minimum 50 per cent local content requirement to qualify as a “Class-I” supplier, which entitles them to pricing and selection preference in government tenders. “Class-II” suppliers, including firms enrolled in India’s Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme, qualify with 20 per cent local content but are considered only if Class-I suppliers cannot meet the demand. The PPP-MII policy currently covers 36 critical telecom product categories, such as routers, ethernet switches, gigabit passive optical network (GPON) equipment, media gateways, customer premises equipment, satellite terminals, telecom batteries, and optical fibre and cables.
The DoT has circulated the review proposal to all stakeholders, including public and private players, both Indian and foreign, and is inviting comments until early July.
