NEW DELHI: Government on Thursday cleared proposals for three semiconductor manufacturing units worth Rs 1.3 lakh crore, including the country’s first fab manufacturing plant by Tata Group and Taiwanese Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp (PSMC) in Gujarat. This will be a big push to India’s electronics manufacturing set-up as the chips will be made within the country for the first time.
The Cabinet nod, which also includes a project involving Japanese Renesas Electronics, follows Rs 22,000 crore testing and packaging unit project of US company Micron, that was approved in June last year (production is expected to happen by close of this year).
“India has taken a giant leap today in gaining a foothold in the coveted chip manufacturing eco-system. With these units, semiconductor manufacturing and its ecosystem will get established in India,” communications minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said.
Tata Electronics will set up a Rs 91,000 crore semiconductor fab project with PSMC at Dholera in Gujarat. The plant will have a capacity to produce 50,000 wafers per month. PSMC is renowned for its expertise in logic and memory foundry segments.
Tata Electronics said it is proud to lead India’s entry into global semiconductor fabrication, and said construction for the project will begin this year. “This will also accelerate our progress towards providing high-technology employment opportunities for the youth,” Randhir Thakur, CEO and MD of Tata Electronics, said.
Minister of state for IT & electronics Rajeev Chandrasekhar said a slew of new proposals are in the pipeline and added that govt expects a total investment outlook of nearly Rs 2.2 lakh crore.
Cabinet has also approved semiconductor unit of Tata Semiconductor Assembly and Test (TSAT) in Assam at an investment of Rs 27,000 crore. Renesas Electronics and Thailand’s Stars Microelectronics’s project in Sanand in Gujarat at an investment of Rs 7,600 crore has also got green signal. Govt is close to approving a Rs 90,000 crore proposal of Israel’s chipmaker Tower Semiconductors.
Vaishnaw said all the units will create nearly 26,000 direct jobs and another one lakh indirect ones.
