The Centre is finalising guidelines for production-linked subsidies for companies willing to manufacture electronic items like microprocessors, semiconductors and others within India, a top IT and Communications Ministry official, said at an Assocham event held in New Delhi on Wednesday (16 December).
"We have introduced an element of production subsidy, now we are in process of finalizing guidelines and since there are different kinds of projects, we are looking for specific technical inputs," said Dr Ajay Kumar, additional secretary in Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY) while addressing a roundtable conference on 'Make in India: Trade and fiscal Incentives for IT hardware and electronics industry,' conducted by The Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (Assocham).
He said that the production subsidy is very substantive and a huge differentiator with 10 per cent of the turnover for 10 years and it is meant for projects that are capital incentive and possibly do not look attractive by themselves.
He also informed that government is working on fabless chip design policy.
He emphasised upon the need to manufacture low-priced laptops of around ten thousand range in India to spur computer manufacturing.
Every village which has connectivity should have; facility for e-education (virtual classroom), e-health whereby every PHC (primary health centre) will have telemedicine linked to the district hospital so that counselling and basic diagnostics can take place and skilling - resource centres in each Panchayat where through virtual medium people can be skilled and made available, community service centre, can become four fundamental pieces in a village to be implemented in places where there is connectivity, he said.
He also said that about 20-25 interested parties had made presentations to the Canara Bank Venture Capital, the nodal agency for Electronics Development Fund (EDF) and they have zeroed on 6 to 7 cases.
EDF is getting registered under the alternative investment fund (AIF) category. That process, I am told should be over sometime in December, it is already before the Sebi (Securities Exchange Board of India) and there is a certain timeline which Sebi has to follow to register fund like this, he added.
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Haider Ali Khan is an alumnus of IIMC. He holds a degree in English Journalism from the prestigious campus. His passion includes Aviation, Technology, Politics and Sports.
