Govt forms Empowered Committee to setup fab projects

The Cabinet, chaired by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has approved to reconstitute the Empowered Committee to setup the Semiconductor Wafer Fabrication (FAB) projects, one of the key initiatives to kick start largest scale manufacturing of electronics goods in the country. The committee, which will be chaired by Dr VK Saraswat (member, NITI Aayog), will include Dr K Radhakrishnan (former chairman, Indian Space Research Organisation), Dr MJ Zarabi, (former CMD, Semiconductor Complex Ltd),  and Prof Narendra Krishna Karmarkar (professor, IIT-Bombay) as the members. In addition, secretaries of Department of Expenditure, Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion, and Department of Electronics and Information Technology will be part of this reconstituted committee.
 
The Government had in 2011 constituted an Empowered Committee to identify technology and investors and to recommend incentives to be provided to set up two FAB facilities in the country. This committee submitted its recommendations to the Government. Based on the recommendations of the Empowered Committee, the Union Cabinet accorded approval for establishing two FAB manufacturing facilities by two consortia, one led by Jaiprakash Associates Ltd along with IBM (USA) and Tower Jazz (Israel) and the other led by HSMC Technologies India Pvt Ltd along with ST Microelectronics (France/Italy) and Silterra (Malaysia); and authorised the Empowered Committee to take all decisions to implement the FAB projects in furtherance of the decision of the Cabinet Letters of Intent have been issued to the two consortia on March 19, 2014 for setting up FAB facilities in India.
 
The setting up of semiconductor wafer fabrication units is a critical pillar required to promote electronics system design and manufacturing in India which will stimulate the flow of capital and technology, create employment opportunities, help higher value addition in the electronic products manufactured in India, reduce dependence on imports, and lead to innovation.