India inviting Smasung, LG for manufacturing: Prasad

India is inviting technology majors like Samsung and LG to set up manufacturing facilities in the country under 'make in India' programme, said Communications and Information Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad.

"We are promoting all the big guns like Samsung and LG to come to India in a big way under 'make in India' programme," the minister said in his address at golden jubilee celebrations of Computer Society of India (CSI) here Saturday.

"Come to India, establish premises, use human resources, technology and talent of young people to make in India for India and also for exports," he told the global electronic manufacturers.

He said the central government plans to promote 20 electronic manufacturing clusters. Under the cluster scheme, states will get Rs.50 crore each if they give 50 acres of land for the clusters.

Prasad, who met chief ministers of both Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, promised to consider sanctioning a third cluster each for both the states.

He said the central government has already approved one cluster each while one additional cluster is in process.

Calling upon industry to come out with innovations, the minister said funding would not be a problem and the electronic development fund has just been established for the purpose - to propel ICT, nano technology and electronic manufacturing in a big way.

Stating that the government aims to build technology empowered India, the minister said digital India programme would create a big space of digital infrastructure for citizens and also a big platform for digital delivery of services.

Noting the government plans to install seven lakh km of optical fibre network in three years against 10 lakh km installed in last 30 years, Prasad hoped this will lead to explosion of e-commerce and give a big push to e-health and e-education.

He noted that the Indian IT sector is estimated to be $108 billion in 2013 while the computers use is growing with about 2.55 million units were sold from January to June this year against 2.03 million last year.

The minister said the country also had 900 million mobile phones while Internet connection are likely to touch 30 crore by end of this year.

"Some of the service providers say by this year end, we will surpass America to become number two after China in Internet penetration."

Prasad said the country would have to be digitally connected. "We are happy with mobile success but we have to go further. Through optical fibre network, we want to connect 2.5 lakh gram panchayats in two and half to three years," he added.