The basic policy contours culled out by Deccan Herald, envisages promotion of Karnataka as key destination for semiconductor ATMP (assembly, testing, marking and packing process), setting up fab facility, Rs 50 crore (US$12.5 million) Kitven Fund for silicon design start-ups, green fund of Rs 100 crore to catalyse green energy initiatives, develop Tier 2 cities and satellite towns as design clusters, hi-tech manufacturing clusters.
It is coming at atime when Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu have taken lead. While Andhra Pradesh is attracting investments in solar photovoltaic manufacturing space, Tamil Nadu has become manufacturing hub carving a niche in EMS space. The comforting fact, however, is 70 per cent of country’s chip designers work in Bangalore and 80 per cent of sector’s revenues in design are from Bangalore alone.
The manufacturing cluster would comprise of core units such as solar PV, ATMP and wafer fab, and ancillary units such as chemicals, gases, photo mask services and other entities of supply chain.
IP creation
To promote IP creation and filing IP subsidy upto 50 per cent of costs will be provided. A Rs 20 crore characterisation lab at Orchid Incubation Centre in Electronic City, loans for start-ups, tax incentives to encourage companies engaged in system/semiconductor/IP development & manufacturing, thrust to key vertical segments like energy, medical electronics, security. To spur spending in LED light, solar street lights, buildings etc, ecosystem to provide infrastructure and incentives to lure investments in areas of solar PV cell manufacturing, wafer fabrication facility, building manufacturing clusters.
Likewise, land at subsidised costs, power tariff concession, tax holidays, land close to airports & ports, exemption from state level taxes & duties, incentives for large projects, are others.
The policy will lower threshold limit to avail incentive on investment for ATMPs to Rs 400 crore as against Centre’s current Rs 1,000 crore, soft loans with attractive rate of interest, 24x7 customs clearance operation, one point contact for approvals, warehouses at airport for fast track process, industrial parks for semiconductor design & manufacturing, promoting solar farms through attractive tariff policy, financial assistance to solar power developers to promote green energy.
To catalyse domain expertise: sponsorship of students for internship programmes with semiconductor firms setting up fund Rs 25 crore corpus, focused school under IIIT-Bangalore offering courses specific to semiconductor manufacturing at a cost of Rs 10 crore, strengthening research labs in institutes by pumping Rs 5 crore, one-time training subsidy of Rs 20,000 for every engineer trained and Rs 10,000 for every diploma holder trained & employment generation.
DH News Service