In an ambitious move, the centre is targeting global leaders for setting up semiconductor fabrication (fab) plants in the country.
The Ministry of Electronics and information Technology (MeitY) is synchronizing the effort and has drawn up a target list of potential firms.
They comprise Taiwanese majors Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, VIA Technology Inc., and United Microelectronics Corporation, US giants Intel, Micron Technology, Inc., NXP Semiconductors, and Texas Instruments, Japanese players Fuji Electric Co. and Panasonic European chipmakers Infineon Technologies AG and STMicroelectronics, and South Korean SK hynix Inc. and Samsung.
The move appears after MeitY floated an expression of interest from global as well as Indian joint ventures last December. The deadline for firms to submit a preliminary project report is March 31.
MeitY is also aiming leading global firms under the recently declared production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme for information technology hardware. It plans to propose incentives between 2 percent and 4 percent for five players making laptops (over$400), tablets (over$200), apart from
servers and personal computers in India.
The global firms, it has targeted include Taiwanese giants Quanta Computer Incorporated, Foxconn, Acer, Asus, and Inventec Corporation, US-based Dell, Apple, Cisco Systems ,Inc., and Flex apart from Indian companies which include Coconics and HLBS Technologies, amid others. The outlay for the PLI scheme has been fixed at Rs. 7,350 crore.
The government is considering a fab plant on three levels. It is seeking initial interest from integrated design manufacturers, foundries or a consortium with an Indian company to establish a new fab plant, or expand an existing one.
This plant will use complementary metal oxide semiconductor technology- an advanced method of making integrated circuits – to manufacture processors, memory included circuits with a capacity of 30,000 wafer starts per month and a wafer size pf 300 millimetre (mm).
“Since there is no dilution of equity, it is not a disinvestment process. The companies and the government retain control of their assets while raising money. This money will remain with the companies for funding their future infrastructure development plans. A Cabinet approval for this will be taken soon,” added the official.
In her Budget speech, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had said, “Debt financing of InvITs and real estate investment trusts (REITs) by foreign portfolio investors will be enabled by making suitable amendments to the relevant legislations.
This will further ease the access of finance to legislations. This will further ease the access of finance to InviTs and REITs thus, augmenting funds for the infrastructure and real estate sectors”.
Dividend payment to REITs and InvITs is also spared from tax deducted at source to ease the compliance load.
Sitharaman added that a National Highways Authority of India, Power Grid Corporation of India , Airports Authority of India, freight corridors of Indian railways, warehousing properties of central public sector enterprises, and sports stadia, among others, were also mentioned by Sitharaman for asset monetisation.
