Thursday, August 22, 2013: On Wednesday, the Principal Secretary to Karnataka government for IT, BT and S&T department, I S N Prasad informed reporters on the sidelines of an “Interactive Workshop on Regulatory & Operational Issues” that soon a brownfield ESDM cluster will come up in the electronics city in addition to one each in Peenya and Mysore, two greenfield ESDM clusters in Devanahalli, Bangalore and Narsapur, Kolar district, Karnataka.
With the establishment of a brownfield cluster, Karnataka’s electronics systems design and manufacturing sector will get a big boost. The workshop was jointly organised by the department and Manufacturers’ Association for Information Technology (MAIT).
“The (electronics city) proposal has been sent to the Central government for approval and we expect it to come within a month or so. The total project cost will be Rs.100 crore, to be shared equally between Centre and Karnataka governments,” said Prasad, the Deccan Herald reported. “If the approval comes through as expected, the cluster would be completed during this fiscal,” he added. Moreover, the Principal Secretary stated that the cluster is expected to provide common testing along with facilities related to it to all manufacturers. He opined that MSME units will derive huge benefits from it.
Prior to this, Minister for IT, BT and S&T, S R Patil stated that the state government has constituted a core committee on ICT & Electronics Hardware with a view to explore the possibilities for enhancing ESDM activity in Karnataka. Presently, the ESDM industry in India is estimated at $45 Billion and is supposed to grow to around $400 Billion by 2020.
As nearly 85 per cent of it is imported, it may surpass oil imports as the largest import item by the year 2020, this is being stated by the Executive Director of MAIT, Anwar Shirpurwala, the Deccan Herald reported.
“Last year, about 12 million PCs were sold in India, 85 per cent of which were imported. Even in the ones manufactured in India, the import component is almost 95 per cent. This should improve,” said Shirpurwala adding that increase in domestic manufacturing will ultimately result in job creation.
