Date: 04/09/2012

The yojana to connect India with its own-tech is on

There are two news for local electronics design and manufacturing in the past 10 days. One is about connecting villages using high speed network and other about focus on local electronics design and manufacturing.

Union Government plans to connect all the Gram Panchayats in the country under the National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN) scheme. The project is to be completed in two years’ time.

The YOJANA magazine has dedicated its September edition to electronics and IT. Stressing the importance given to the electronics industry, Shri. Kapil Sibal, Minister of Communications and IT released a special issue of the magazine YOJANA, themed on Electronics System Design and Manufacturing ( ESDM) and Information Technology (IT), in New Delhi on 31 Aug 2012.

Mr. Sibal said "ESDM is the next sunrise sector for India and that the fast growing demand for electronics hardware in the country coupled with our growing strengths in Semiconductor Chip design provide a huge opportunity for India to become a globally competitive electronics hub. In the coming months, the effort will be to create greater awareness and marketing of the new policy initiatives and therefore it is very timely that YOJANA has dedicated its September edition to Electronics and IT."

He said the Dept of Electronics and IT ( DeitY) has taken several major decisions to make India a preferred destination for investments in the ESDM sector. The Modified Special Incentive Package Scheme (M-SIPS) provides 25% of the capital investment in non-SEZ area and 20% in SEZ area as financial incentive for the ESDM sector. Rs 10,000 crores has been earmarked for the scheme during XII Plan. The Minister said guidelines to operationalize the scheme would be finalized in September 2012 and applications under the scheme can be made from October 2012.

Other major policy initiatives which have been approved by the Cabinet recently, for the ESDM sector, include providing preference to domestically manufactured electronic goods in government procurement and those electronic goods having security implications, setting up of semiconductor wafer fabs, and assistance for setting up Electronics Manufacturing Clusters.
The YOJANA magazine is available online at http://yojana.gov.in/

Source: pib.nic.in