Draft roadmap for ESDM industry by October-end

The trade body will identify the potential areas across the state for setting up hardware industries

The India Electronics & Semiconductor Association (IESA), the premier trade body representing the Electronic System Design and Manufacturing (ESDM) industry will submit the draft roadmap for growth of ESDM industry in Odisha by October end.

“The draft report will have the industry overviews , SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis of the state, proposed locations for ESDM units and some policy recommendations”, said an IESA official.

In March this year, the state IT department roped in IESA to prepare the roadmap.The trade body, recently held discussions with the local entrepreneurs and government departments to apprise them on opportunities of the sector.

The demand for electronics in India stood at $45 billion in 2008-09 and is expected to touch $400 billion by 2020. The Union government’s National Policy on Electronics has set a target to attract an investment of nearly $100 billion and create an employment of around 28 million by 2020.

The new Information and Communication Technology (ICT) policy of the state has provisions for attracting the investors both from the software and hardware industry.

By 2020, the draft policy aims to achieve a gross ICT turnover (including exports of software and IT services, ESDM, domestic consumption and training) of $ four billion and attract 10 leading IT/ITes companies and five leading ESDM companies to the state.

In the policy, the state government has also provisioned for setting up a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) with Odisha Computer Application Centre (OCAC) as lead partner for administering venture capital fund for IT/ITES/ESDM startup companies.

The proposed policy promised 20 per cent investment subsidy on fixed capital investment for plant and machinery (except land & building) to IT/ITES/ESDM units with a maximum limit of Rs  50 lakh for IT/ITES industries and Rs  5 crore for ESDM industries.