EV charging stations to be mandatory in buildings
The Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs has released a draft on guidelines for EV charging infrastructure that will make it mandatory for residential and commercial buildings to have electric vehicle charging stations. The new rules will cover residential colonies, institutional buildings, bus terminals, multi-level parking lots, and service stations.
A fresh policy to promote the use of electric vehicles is also likely to be in the offing. According to the proposal, the government will create ‘favourable ecosystems’ in nine polluted cities having a population of over 4 million. It will gradually be extended to cities that have a population of one million-plus.
States are also warming up to the idea of electric mobility. After Kerala announced its electric vehicle policy last week, 8 more states will soon be coming out with their policies to promote electric mobility within their boundaries. The states are Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Goa and Assam.
The policies are also likely to include incentives like reimbursement of acquisition cost or reduced cost of acquisition; reimbursement of state goods and services tax; exemption on road tax for initial few years; and capital incentives on investment for manufacturing and research and development (R&D) units.
Increasing pollution in Indian cities is bearing down on people to opt for electric vehicles. According to Easing of Moving Index 2018, 57% respondents from top 20 Indian cities are willing to replace their traditional fuel vehicles with an electric counterpart over the next few years, indicating potential demand for electric vehicles. As a part of the Ola Mobility Institute, the cab aggregator has launched “Mission Electric” with a commitment to put 1 million electric vehicles on the road over the next three years.
The Electric Mobility smallcase comprises companies that are investing in the electric vehicle ecosystem and are expected to grow with growth in electric mobility. This smallcase allows investors to benefit from the growth of the ecosystem.
India has become world’s second-largest telecom market
A report released by the Internet and Mobile Association of India has stated that internet services sector in India, which at present is valued at $33.8 billion, will reach $76.4 billion by 2022. The number of internet users in the country is also projected to increase by 1.6 times from 481 million to reach 762 million in 2022. Along with the increased availability of internet connectivity, the number of smartphone users in India too is estimated to grow at 1.7 times to reach 526 million in 2022.
A KPMG report said that India has become the world’s second-largest telecom market in 2018 with over a billion subscribers. With the given trends, the digital economy is expected to cross $1 trillion by FY2022.
Speaking at the Indian Mobile Congress last week, Telecom Secretary Aruna Sundararajan said that the telecom sector is on the path to stability and is expected to return to growth by early next year. She said that the industry-government alliance could help the country attract investments worth $100 billion by 2022 and that the Department of Telecom had taken a number of steps to reform the sector. These include doubling of infrastructure, including fibre and base transceiver stations, declaring the universal right of way (RoW) policy, allowing 650 MHz of spectrum for Wi-Fi services, public data office (PDO) framework and removal of cascading taxation from the MVNO (mobile virtual network operator) regime.
Investors can get exposure to India’s digital ecosystem by buying the Digital Inclusion smallcase.
Markets update
Benchmark indices closed in the red this week. Nifty closed down 2.65% at 10,030 and Sensex closed down 2.82% at 33,349.3.
