JOIN USAiming to promote India as an electronics manufacturing hub, the centre on Tuesday said it has selected eight cities where companies setting up such facilities will get incentives, including subsidy.
“The government has selected eight new places — Ghaziabad, Vadodara, Ahmedabad, Gandhinagar, Nagpur, Nashik, Aurangabad and Thane — for Modified Special Incentive Package Scheme (M-SIPS), notified in July 2012.
If someone sets up an electronic manufacturing facility here, they will be given subsidy,” Communications and Information Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad told reporters here.
Claiming that electronic manufacturing is going to be the key area of the government, he said his ministry aims to create 2.8 crore jobs in this sector in next two to three years.
He said scheme covers production of products across the value chain from raw material, components, design & chip, assembly, testing, R&D and packaging.
The government has allocated Rs 10,000 crore for M-SIPS in the 12th Five-Year Plan and Under the Modified Special Incentive Package Scheme (M-SIPS) notified in July 2012, refunds will be provided on capital expenditure for new units or for expansion of more than 25 per cent of existing capacity in certain greenfield or brownfield electronics manufacturing clusters.
Apart from this, the Minister said seven greenfield electronic manufacturing clusters including Bhopal, Hyderabad, Bhiwandi, Jabalpur, Kakinada and Hosur and a brownfield unit in Electronic City in Bangalore will be set up and the government will promote chip-making facilities in this project.
He claimed that the government approved the setting up of two semiconductor wafer fabrication manufacturing facilities in the country in February.
On the telecom sector, Prasad said state-owned operators BSNL and MTNL have been directed to improve the quality of services to consumers and their performance will be monitored.
He said he has asked the Department of Telecom to look into a report by Vodafone, which said India is among 29 countries that sought access to its network for intercepting calls, SMSes and e-mails.
On Vodafone tax issue, the Minister also said that the finance ministry has prioritised resolution of tax disputes involving telecoms companies. About the postal department, the Minister said, the government will revive its plan to set up postal bank.