Govt plans Rs 10,000-cr fund to promote electronic manufacturing

Chennai: The Union Government proposes to set up a Rs 10,000-crore Electronic Development Fund (EDF) next year, to promote electronic hardware manufacturing in the country.

Mr Ajay Kumar, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Communications & Information Technology, said the EDF will float several other funds under its umbrella to identify “deserving” R&D projects in different hardware manufacturing verticals and fund them.

All these funds will be managed by different fund managers. Though EDF will have anywhere between 25 per cent and 100 per cent equity exposure in these funds, it will not interfere in day-to-day affairs of them. The Government will, however, give some broad guidelines to be followed, he said.

Speaking to Business Line on the sidelines of an Electronics Supply Chain meet organised here today by the Electronic Industries Association of India (Elcina), Mr Kumar said the task force constituted by the Department of Information Technology, early this year came out with a roadmap for rapid growth of the electronic manufacturing industry in the medium and long term.

Five recommendations
The Government has identified five major recommendations from that report which include setting; up of a National Electronic Mission, EDF, semiconductor wafer fabs, to create policies for preferential access to procure electronic goods, encourage manufacture of specific high priority product lines by providing capital grant and creation of electronic manufacturing clusters.

On the cluster development, he said since identifying the place with all necessary infrastructure is the most difficult thing, it has been suggested that islands of good infrastructure be developed to facilitate electronic manufacturers to set up shops.

The Government proposes to support these cluster development projects with up to 50 per cent of the development cost. According to him, the development cost may run up to Rs 50 crore per 100-acre parcel.