JOIN USAccording to Department of Information Technology Senior Director P S Narotra, both foreign and Indian players having sizeable presence in the sector and networth are eligible to send in their proposals for the ambitious projects.
Pointing out that 100 per cent foreign direct investment is permitted under automatic route in semiconductor fabs, he said, the Centre was in the process of further developing a policy framework to provide preference for domestically produced electronics goods in government procruments.
He pointed out that the Centre is enabling multi-billion dollar investments in programmes which are major consumers of electronic goods like 3G rollout, Wimax and 4G broadband to cover over 6 lakh villages, besides national e-governance programmes.
Apart from financial and fiscal incentives for capital investment, the Centre will provide assistance for setting up world-class infrastructure for fabs as also eco-system units. These fabs are planned to be set up in one/two states which are yet to be identified. Once up and running they are expected to generate 2.83 crore employment (direct and indirect) by 2020. Successful bidders are expected to be shortlisted by August, 2011 by which the time the empowered panel would submit its recommendations.
The semiconductor design industry in the country, consisting of VLSI design, broard/hardware design and embedded software development, is estimated to touch US$10.6 billion in 2012.