Yogi govt plans 1,000-acre mega Electronics City as part of Rs 200 bn plan

Under ESDM, govt had targeted investment of about Rs 200 bn and 300,000 new job opportunities over next few years

The Uttar Pradesh government is planning to develop an Electronics City spread over 1,000 acres in the National Capital Region (NCR).

The facility would come under the jurisdiction of the Yamuna Expressway Authority and showcase UP as the emerging electronics manufacturing hub of India. UP deputy chief minister Dinesh Sharma has directed the state IT and electronics department to speed up the proposal in this regard.

The incumbent Yogi Adityanath government had already proclaimed Noida, Greater Noida and Yamuna Expressway regions as constituents of UP’s Electronics Manufacturing Zone under the new UP Electronics Manufacturing Policy.

Under ESDM (Electronic System Design & Manufacturing), the government had targeted investment of about Rs 200 billion and 300,000 new job opportunities over the next few years. The new policy promises financial incentives, interest subsidy, stamp duty rebate, GST exemptions, and single-window clearance, among other things, to attract private investment.

In April 2018, top Chinese smartphone brand Xiaomi had hosted 50 of its global component suppliers based in Japan, Korea and Taiwan in Greater Noida for a ‘Suppliers’ Summit’ to showcase opportunities in India. These suppliers were also taken to Andhra Pradesh as an alternative destination. Xiaomi had pegged potential investment in the segment at Rs 150 billion with Greater Noida as the preferred location.

At UP Investors Summit 2018 on 21-22 February, the Adityanath government had netted investment proposals totalling Rs 55 billion in electronics manufacturing sector alone of the net Rs 4.68 trillion of investment commitments.

Meanwhile, Sharma said the state had been successful in attracting investment in the sector through proactive policies and engaging with the companies. Recently, consumer electronics manufacturers, Vivo and Haier, had announced to invest in the state. Noida and Greater Noida regions are already the biggest mobile phone manufacturing hubs in the country.

The government wants to boost the sector and increase its contribution to the Gross State Domestic Production (GSDP) by giving impetus to the setting up of green field electronics manufacturing hubs/parks in UP.

On July 29, Prime Minster Narendra Modi had laid the foundation of industrial projects worth Rs 600 billion here. While, the bulk of 26% of projects pertained to heavy industries, it was followed by food processing (17 per cent), IT (11 per cent), housing (10 per cent), MSME (6 per cent), diary (5 per cent), tourism (5 per cent), and animal husbandry (4 per cent).

On August 22, 2014, the previous Akhilesh Yadav government had also approved Electronics Manufacturing Policy 2014, which had benchmarked host of fiscal and non-fiscal incentives for setting up of electronics manufacturing units in the state and expansion of existing units. The Policy had targetted establishing Electronic Manufacturing Clusters (EMC) and capitalising on the proposed semiconductor fabrication (FAB) unit along Yamuna Expressway with an investment of about Rs 350 billion. The plant was proposed under the consortium of JP Associates, IBM and Tower Semiconductor Limited, Israel.