Saturday, February 01, 2014: The electronics industry in the state of Karnataka has got a big boost with the in-principle approval of Rs 850 million electronics cluster. The cluster has been approved from the Department of Electronics and Information Technology. The state will now set up for its first Electronic System Design and Manufacturing (ESDM) brownfield cluster development project in Electronic City near Bangalore, informed state minister for IT, Biotechnology and Science & Technology S R Patil.
The brownfield cluster aims to accelerate the growth of ESDM industry in the state and will be executed with an estimated cost of Rs 851.5 million. The cluster will be spread in 1.6 acres of land. Patil said, “We are expecting the cluster concept to work wonders in increasing the state’s electronic exports by helping the industry to penetrate rural areas of the state.”
He informed that the IT and other knowledge-based industries in the state have also been exempted from state labour laws for over five years. They have also got a stamp duty exemption of 75 per cent. The minister said, “The knowledge-based sector will be considered essential services and barred from strikes and shutdowns from April. They will also be exempted from complying with working hours regulations as stipulated in the Karnataka Industrial Employment Rules, 1946, for another five years.”
The state is also planning to draft a separate semiconductor promotion policy, informed Srivatsa Krishna, secretary, department of information technology, biotechnology and science & technology, GoK. “We expect the new new i4 (IT, ITES, Innovation, Incentive Policy) announced recently to generate 20 lakh IT sector jobs in the state by 2020, by when Bangalore is set to become the largest employer in the state,” Patil said. He also handed over certificates of registration to startups operating in the ESDM sector, for setting up incubation centres in Tier II cities.
