Budget 2024: Rs 13K crore allocated for semi-conductors and IT hardware
Ajay Banerjee
New Delhi, February 1
Focusing on making high-end semi-conductors, the government has more than doubled the allocation for making these, in the proposed interim budget for the year 2024-25.
The allocation for ‘Modified Programme for Development of Semiconductors and Display Manufacturing Ecosystem in India’ is proposed at Rs 6,903 crore, more than double the Rs 3,000 allocated in the present fiscal.
This allocation has several sub-schemes, including Rs 900 crore for modernisation of the semiconductor laboratory, Mohali, Rs 1,500 crore for setting up semi-conductor fabrication unit and Rs 4,203 crore setting up semiconductors, silicon, sensors assembly facilities in India.
All smart phones, laptops, smart TVs, cars, air-conditioners, military hardware, planes, satellites, engines, missiles, life saving devices, CT scans use semi-conductors.
The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) which is responsible for key schemes in the electronics manufacturing and semiconductor ecosystem has an overall allocation of Rs 21,385 crore in the interim budget.
Also, the interim budget proposes a sum of Rs 6,200 crore for production-linked incentive for large scale electronics manufacturing and for IT hardware for manufacturing laptops tablets, all-in-one PCs and servers.
This is aimed at broadening and deepening of the manufacturing ecosystem by encouraging localisation of components and sub-assemblies.
This is in furtherance of the vision of ‘Aatmanirbhar Bharat’ and positioning India as the global hub for electronic system designing and manufacturing.
Also, a sum of 1,148 crore is allocated for R&D in absorption of emerging technology. R&D in electronics is classified as work on electronics system design and application, microelectronics, nanoelectronics, medical electronics, etc.
Also included in R&D are high performance computing, national supercomputing mission, quantum technologies, artificial intelligence, data analytics, next generation communication-5G and strategic electronics.
