Tuesday, July 16, 2013: The Government of Andhra Pradesh will soon begin working on the e-hardware clusters to come up in Hyderabad that entailed a total investment of Rs 35.4 billion. The amount includes the central and state government contributing Rs 9.4 billion to develop the infrastructure while the rest of the investments will be put in by private players who would be setting up the manufacturing units.
As for the cost of setting up the infrastructure, the central government will be bearing 50 per cent of the burden. Building these clusters would fall under the realm of the national policy for hardware manufacturing development.
The already existent Fab City will be rechristened as eCity and will house several hardware firms in its 600 acre periphery. The area includes 40 per cent of the SEZ or Special Economic Zone in the state. The total cost of the transformation would be Rs 5.8 billion and the center will be contributing Rs 2.3 billion. Apart from this, the Electronic Industries Association of Andhra Pradesh has promised a further investment of Rs 18 billion towards the establishment of manufacturing units. The total setup when completed will be generating more than 35,000 jobs.
Ponnala Lakshmaiah, the Information Technology Minister of AP said that the e-hardware industry had registered a total business amounting to Rs 65 billion last year in 2012 while the national total was Rs 350 billion. The minister was addressing a press conference and added that the electronic bill for imports would soon surpass that of oil imports and this will be a burden on the national exchequer. Hardware clusters such as these would help reduce the burden.
