The Centre has tweaked its semiconductor incentive programme to focus on chip design, supply-chain development and advanced manufacturing.
The Centre will revamp its semiconductor incentive scheme under India Semiconductor Mission (ISM) 2.0 to emphasise chip design, supply-chain development, and advanced manufacturing while doing away with subsidies on land and tech transfer, The Indian Express reported.
The central government’s new scheme will not fund the cost of technology transfer on the grounds of it being “hard to evaluate accurately” and will leave the responsibility of acquiring land to state governments instead of central subsidies.
“It is almost impossible to reliably calculate the exact amount, so we have made changes accordingly,” a senior government official said according to the report while explaining the omission of subsidies for tech transfer.
The Union cabinet had approved ISM 2.0 with an outlay of nearly $14.8 billion. With a revised approach, fabrication plants under the new scheme will get 40 per cent of the capital costs as subsidy as compared to 50 per cent provided earlier in Phase 1. The revised subsidy will be 35 per cent for assembly and testing facilities and 35 per cent for advanced packaging. Conventional packaging projects will get 25 per cent.
As per The Indian Express, along with providing grants, the government will possibly invest in some semiconductor design companies and start-ups as a stakeholder.
Speciality chemical and gas manufacturers will get incentives up to 30 per cent on the cost, while research and development projects related to new generation chip design may get 75 per cent subsidy funded jointly by the Centre and state governments.
The government hopes to create India’s own semiconductor ecosystem and wants to design and produce chips covering 70-75 per cent of the country’s demand by 2029 and aspires to become one of the major semiconductor producers globally by 2035.
