Wednesday, October 09, 2013: After giving a nod to the proposal for setting up of two semiconductor manufacturing units in the country, the Government of India has again invited Expression of Interest from technology providers and investors for setting up a semiconductor fab in the country to boost domestic electronics manufacturing and to cater to the growing demand in the electronics sector. This will help in reducing the import of electronics products in the country.
According to the EoI document posted on Deity website, any company or consortium can apply for the same, the response submission date of which is 6 November, 2013. The announcement on the DeitY website reads, “The Government of India (GoI) has accorded ‘in principle’ approval for establishing two semiconductor wafer fabrication (FAB) manufacturing facilities in India and has also decided to apprise all other semiconductor wafer fabrication manufacturers, of the quantum of subsidy/ other benefits/ support being offered. The technical requirements, the structure of incentives, the requirement of equity structure and other terms are indicated in the format for Expression of Interest (EoI), available on this page for download. Entities fulfilling the requirements may respond in the prescribed format, within a period of four weeks.”
A semiconductor fabrication plant is a manufacturing unit where electronics devices including integrated circuits are manufactured. It is worth mentioning here that some of the world’s leading economies including the USA, France, Germany, Ireland, Japan, Singapore, Taiwan and China besides a number of developing economies like Malaysia and Israel have their own fabs. These fabs continue to contribute significantly to the growth and development of the economy of their respective countries and it is hoped that this would be the case in India as well. So far, India had no choice but to depend on the imports of electronics products, mainly chips. But these fabs will be helpful in checking the imports of electronics, which may exceed oil imports by 2018. Setting up of the previously approved fabs will require an investment of around Rs 250,000 million. These fabs will boost R&D and innovation in the field of electronics, which will eventually help in generating 30 million jobs (both direct and indirect) in the country by 2020.
The Government of India had sent proposals to establish fabs in the country nearly two and a half years ago. An empowered committee received as many as 30 application, out of which two fab projects were short-listed. The committee included Sam Pitroda, adviser to the Prime Minister, and V Krishnamurthy, chairman of the National Manufacturing Competitiveness Council, and few others. Jaypee Group is spearheading one of the two project consortium. It has IBM as its technology partner, whereas the other project is led by Hindustan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation. Its technology partner is Geneva-based STMicroelectronics.
