BANGALORE, INDIA: After the committee that was constituted last year to set up a wafer lab in India and approval for Preferential Market Access last Thursday, things seem to be hotting up for the Electronic Systems Design and Manufacturing (ESDM) sector.

At the Indian Semiconductor Association's (ISA) Vision Summit here on Monday, Union Minister of Communications and IT, Kapil Sibal, said that they would adopt a six-layered approach to promote the sector.

It includes earmarking an Electronics Development Fund of about Rs.. 10,000 crore to support R&D, innovation, IPR development, technology transfer of IT and nanoelectronics, establishing a National Electronics Mission (NEM) targeting $400 billion over the next 10 years, subsidies for modified chips and identifying various verticals of the sector, and setting up an Electronics Manufacturing Cluster (EMC).

The EMC would be implemented through a special purpose vehicle (SPV). EMC units ought to hold, at least, 51 per cent of the stake capital of SPV and single unit should hold 25 per cent. Financial assistance green field would be restricted to 50 per cent of the project cost, subject to a ceiling of Rs.. 50 crore for every 100 acres of land and for brown field, it would be restricted to 75 per cent of the project cost, subject to a ceiling of Rs.. 50 crore.

"Today, electronics is the largest and fastest growing manufacturing industry in the world. Current global hardware production is around $1.75 trillion and by 2020, it is going to grow upto $2.4 trillion," said Sibal, "On the domestic front, electronic driven industry has emerged as the contributor to national economy."

He expressed confidence that India could focus on semiconductor manufacturing, since we have chip design services available and enormous high quality human resource.

Sibal also expounded on the need to reposition mobile as a powerful tool of empowerment. "Mobile could be a proof of identity, it can enhance secure financial transactional capability and to offer multi-lingual services for communities, which is peculiar to India," he added.

The minister said electronics manufacturing was an ideal investment opportunity for entrepreneurs and touched upon the Electronics Manufacturing Policy, which aims to create employment opportunities of $28 million by 2020, to create 200 electronics hubs and to achieve a turnover of $55 billion in the chip design and embedded software industry.