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India’s domestic industry has around half-a-dozen makers of solar cells and modules, with total capacity of around 3,000 MW.
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This is hardly enough to meet country’s burgeoning demand.
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Union Government has imposed safeguard duty of 25% on import of solar cells (whether or not assembled in modules or panels) from China and Malaysia.
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The move is aimed at helping domestic solar cell manufacturing sector.
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The safeguard duty now puts locally-made panels on par with imported ones in terms of cost.
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Solar Power projects now will have to revive their supply chain and make input components locally instead of importing them and put modules together here.
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Domestic sector is not being fully exploited because of obsolete technology.
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Moreover price of solar equipment produced in the country is not competitive as compared to that of foreign manufacturers, especially Chinese manufacturers.
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Domestic sector needs to do lot more to be effective meet required standards as compared to imported solar cells.
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They also need to improve technology.