Indian government announces semiconductor proposals
Clearing up some confusion as to what manufacturing would come from last year's Semiconductor Policy, the Minister for IT & Communications, Mr A. Raja revealed that a total of six major proposals have been forwarded to the government. As has been suggested in Semiconductor India magazine, much of this investment is from an internal source as the government has had more difficulty that expected in enticing multi-national semiconductor manufacturing companies despite the assistance outlined in the policy document.
Another issue confirmed by the press release is that any manufacturing ahead will not be confined to semiconductor manufacturing and will include photovoltaic manufacturing as well as proposals for the manufacture of items such as polysilicon wafers, solar cells, solar photovoltaic modules (SPV), liquid crystal display (LCD), integrated circuits-advanced logic, memory and embedded system on chip. The Government has now received commitments of almost Rs 63,000 crore from the six companies, under the Semiconductor Policy.
By far the company making the biggest project offering is energy company Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL). Run by one of India's richest men it is a strong and positive move foro the local industry. RIL has plans to set up a semiconductor wafer fabrication plant and solar PV module unit, at a total outlay of over Rs 30,000 crore.
Reliance Industries' propose to establish a semiconductor wafer fab with an Assembly, Test, Mark and Packaging (ATMP) facility. This would involve an investment of Rs 18,521 crore spread over a period of 10 years. The company plans to locate the proposed facility – with a fab capacity of 70,000 wafers per month and ATMP capacity of 10 million packages per week at Navi Mumbai, Hyderabad, Mysore or Haryana. This first-of-its-kind fab in the private sector would likely focus on areas such as advanced logic, memories and embedded system on chips.
Reliance also plans to manufacture polysilicon, solar-grade wafers and SPV modules with capacity of 1 Giga Watt, at an investment of Rs 11,631 crore over a 10-year period. While the solar project located at SEZ in Jamnagar (Gujarat) is expected to create over 11,000 jobs, the semiconductor wafer fab and ATMP units would employ another 4,000 people. RIL has sought a subsidy of Rs 3,394.5 crore for the semiconductor fab and Rs 2,326.2 crore for the solar project.
Other companies that have applied to the Government under the scheme are Videocon Industries (Rs 8,000 crore investment), Moser Baer PV Technologies (Rs 6,000 crore), Titan Energy System (Rs 5,880 crore), KSK Energy Ventures (Rs 3,211 crore), and Signet Solar (Rs 9,672 crore).
