Chandrasekhar rebuts Raghuram Rajan's criticism on PLI, calls it misleading

Terming former RBI governor Raghuram Rajan as a repeat offender, Union Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar on Thursday issued a word-by-word rebuttal of his criticism of the production-linked incentive scheme for mobile phone manufacturing.

Rajan in a social media post questioned the outcome of the PLI scheme for mobile phones as companies continue to import most of the components, and the subsidies are paid on finished phones and not on the value addition done by the mobile phone companies.

He also questioned if subsidies being paid to the companies under the PLI scheme and tax waivers are more than the value addition the mobile phone makers are doing in the country.

The minister of state for electronics and IT said that he had responded to Rajan eight months ago when he tried to discredit the smartphone PLI after which he went and "now he is back with some deceitful numbers and shoddy comparisons".

The PLI scheme for mobile phones was notified on April 1, 2020. The scheme extends an ..