 "Chip plant, fighter jets: A flurry of India-US deals as Modi, Biden meet")
On the second day of his four-day state visit to the United States (US), Prime Minister Narendra Modi held one-on-one meetings with top CEOs in Washington DC on Thursday and called upon them to boost investment and manufacturing in India.
Hours later, General Electric’s aerospace arm announced that it had entered into a partnership with India’s state-owned Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL) to make advanced fighter jet engines for the Indian Air Force. US semiconductor giants Micron Technology and Applied Materials, on the other hand, announced investments totalling $1.22 billion in India’s semiconductor value chain.
The memorandum of understanding between GE Aerospace and HAL was announced shortly after a meeting between Modi and General Electric CEO H Lawrence Culp Jr. The US firm said the partnership would include potential joint production of F414 engines in India for the second generation light-combat aircraft (LCA) Tejas Mk2, which is currently at design stage.
The advanced engines are already in use by two fighter jets of the US Army. The first of these, the Super Hornet, entered service in 1999. It is also used in the JAS 39 Gripen, a lightweight, single-seater fighter jet made by Sweden's Saab AB.
Modi also held separate meetings with Sanjay Mehrotra, CEO of Micron Technology, and Gary E Dickerson, president and CEO of semiconductor toolmaker Applied Materials. Later, Micron announced its plans to build a new assembly and test facility in Gujarat to build and export random-access memory DRAM and flash memory products.
The $825-million plant has been approved under the modified Assembly, Testing, Marking and Packaging (ATMP) component of the Centre’s production-linked scheme for semiconductor manufacturing and may support up to 20,000 direct and indirect jobs. Set to be developed over two phases, it will see construction beginning in 2023 and will turn operational in late 2024, the company said in a release.
“Micron will receive 50 per cent fiscal support for the total project cost from the Indian central government and incentives representing 20 per cent of the total project cost from the state of Gujarat. The combined investment by Micron and the two government entities over the course of both phases will be up to $2.75 billion,” it said.
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The plant will meet long-term demand for memory and storage across markets as Asian shipments surge. Last year, Micron announced plans to invest a whopping $100 billion over the next 20-plus years to build a semiconductor fabrication plant in New York state.
Meanwhile, Applied Materials announced it would invest $400 million over the next four years in a new engineering centre in India. To be located near the company’s existing facility in Bengaluru, it is likely to support more than $2 billion worth of potential investments and create 500 new advanced engineering jobs, the company said.
Applied currently operates across six sites in India and works closely with Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, and the Indian Institute of Technology in Mumbai.
“This is a big milestone in India’s road map and growth as a semiconductor nation. In the last 18 months, after the announcement of semiconductor vision by the PM and the planned investment of Rs 76,000 crore to catalyse and build India’s semicon ecosystem, much progress has been made,” said Rajeev Chandrasekhar, minister of state for electronics and information technology.
The latest announcements are the result of engagements under the initiative on Critical and Emerging Technology (iCET) dialogue launched by India and the United States in May 2022, a top official said. It covers a wide range of critical and emerging technology areas, including semiconductor supply chains, defence, space, telecommunications, artificial intelligence, and quantum technologies.
Also on Thursday, the Indian Farmers Fertiliser Cooperative Ltd (IFFCO) said it had signed an agreement with California-based Kapoor Enterprises Inc for export of nano liquid urea.