The 17-member committee shall work on various ways to enable and develop an ecosystem for semiconductor and display fabrication as well as for startups and micro, small and medium scale industries
Looking to provide a more solid path to the government’s Rs 76,000 crore semiconductor mission, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) has announced the formation of a 17 member advisory committee.
The Minister of Electronics and Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw will be the chairperson of the committee, while Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar will be the vice-chairperson.
Niti Aayog member V K Saraswat, Principal scientific advisor to the government of India, and secretaries from the ministry of external affairs, departments of expenditure, economic affairs, and promotion of industry and internal trade, respectively will be members of the committee.
The deputy national security advisor of the National Security Council Secretariat will also be a member of the committee while the secretary of ministry of electronics and information technology will be the convenor of the committee.
Apart from these, Vinod Dham, the founder and former managing partner at Indo-US Venture Partners, Ajit Manocha, the president of the US chapter of global semiconductor industry body SEMI, Neelkanth Mishra of Credit Suisse, among others from private industry have also been announced as a part of the advisory committee.
The newly minted committee shall also provide inputs to the government in order to enable the building of a resilient supply chain, promote investments and ways of financing the semiconductor sector, research and innovation as well as intellectual property generation.
Apart from these, the 17-member committee shall work on various ways to enable and develop an ecosystem for semiconductor and display fabrication as well as for startups and micro, small and medium scale industries.
In December last year, the Union cabinet had approved a Rs 76,000 crore policy programme for semiconductor and display manufacturing ecosystem in the country. As a part of the scheme, the government has announced several incentives and support for companies engaged in silicon semiconductor fabs, display fabs, compound semiconductors, silicon photonics, sensors fabs, semiconductor packaging and semiconductor design.
As a part of the scheme, for setting up of silicon complementary metal oxide semiconductor, fabrication units that manufacture technology node of 28 nm or lower will get up to 50 per cent of the project cost as incentive, while for above 28 nm but up to 45 nm, the Centre will provide 40 per cent of the unit cost.
