Prime minister Narendra Modi on Friday underlined six reasons for India to be an attractive investment destination for semiconductor technologies, saying the country's own consumption of semiconductors is expected to cross $80 billion by 2026 and $110 billion by 2030.
Modi made these remarks while addressing the inaugural session at the Semicon India Conference 2022.
The prime minister highlighted the critical role of semiconductors in today's world and said "it is our collective aim to establish India as one of the key partners in global semiconductor supply chains."
India has an exceptional semiconductor design talent pool, which makes up to 20% of the world's semiconductor design engineers, says Modi. "Almost all of the top 25 semiconductor design companies have their design or R&D centres in our country," he adds.
With steps like connecting 6 lakh villages with broadband investment in developing capabilities in 5G, IoT and clean energy technologies, India is paving the way to lead the next technology revolution, the PM says. "India is building a digital infrastructure to connect over 1.3 billion Indians."
India has undertaken several measures towards transforming the manufacturing sector, says Modi. "At a time when humanity was fighting a once in a century pandemic, India was not only improving the health of our people but also the health of our economy."
The prime minister talked about the Production Linked Incentive (PLI) schemes that offer incentives of over $26 billion in 14 key sectors. Over the next five years, the electronics manufacturing sector is expected to see record growth, he says.
The government in December last year approved a ₹76,000-crore PLI scheme for the semiconductor sector. This programme aims to provide financial support to companies investing in semiconductors, display manufacturing and design ecosystems.
To build an ecosystem for semiconductor manufacturing in India, PM Modi says the country has undertaken wide-ranging reforms for improving the ease of doing business in India. The prime minister spoke about measures like the abolition of more than 25,000 compliances, a push towards auto-renewal of licences, transparency and speed in regulatory framework via digitisation and "one of the most favourable taxation structures in the world".
The prime minister's semiconductor push comes at a time when India's automobile industry is facing a slowdown in car sales due to the global chip shortage kicked off by the pandemic last year.
In February, mining giant Vedanta partnered with chip maker Foxconn to make semiconductors in India as the country plans to cut its reliance on imported chips. Vedanta will hold the majority of the equity in the JV, while Foxconn will be the minority shareholder.
