“As well as offering financial incentives for companies to establish semiconductor fabs in the country, we could potentially encourage products made in India to use semiconductors made here,” the official said. responsible.

Pointing to the possibility of import restrictions on semiconductors once the capability here is operational, the official said: “Why would we allow this to be imported from elsewhere if there is a… compatible product… that is made in India. Why would we allow anything to be imported from Taiwan? »

Last December, the Union Cabinet approved a Rs 76,000 crore scheme to provide incentive support to companies engaged in silicon semiconductor fabs, display fabs, compound semiconductors , silicon photonics, sensor factories, semiconductor packaging and semiconductor design.

The first stage of evaluation of these applications will be carried out by the India Semiconductor Mission, according to the official quoted above. “The government is in the final stages of selecting a CEO for the Indian Semiconductor Mission (ISM) and could make a decision as early as mid-May. Once this is done, the ISM will begin evaluating proposals for the PLI scheme,” the person added.

“Once the proposals have been approved by ISM, they will be forwarded to Cabinet for final approval. We estimate that after signing an agreement, it will take the selected entities approximately three years to start production of semi- drivers.

So far, the government has received five applications for the establishment of semiconductor manufacturing and display manufacturing units with a total investment commitment of $20.5 billion (Rs 1.53 lakh crore ). For setting up semiconductor manufacturing units, proposals have been received from Vedanta (which has announced a joint venture with Foxconn), Singapore-based IGSS Ventures and ISMC, which is led by Next Orbit Ventures Fund. .

(The correspondent is in Bangalore at the invitation of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology)