Govt approves a fund to boost electronics manufacturing

The government has approved setting up of an Electronics Development Fund for giving a boost to domestic manufacturing.
The fund will work in partnership with venture funds and will primarily focus on encouraging creation of Intellectual Property Rights.
"Cabinet has approved Electronics Development Fund. The EDF will be managed by SIDBI or any equivalent financial institution through a high-level management board which will have members from Ministry of Communications and IT as well," an official source said.
The fund was earlier proposed to have corpus of Rs 10,000 crore but the approved scheme does not has any fixed corpus.
"EDF will be fund of funds. It will invest in daughter funds. Government's contribution will be decided by EDF Management Board after scrutiny of project and as per capacity of fund managers," the source said.

The fund will finance projects both for development of technology and acquisitions in the field of electronics system design and manufacturing, nano-electronics and IT.

The fund will take minority stake in daughter fund, the source said.
"Many foreign venture funds are interested in coming to India in the field of electronics. Government participation through EDF will act as catalysts in bring those funds," the source said.
Indian government is putting in place resources to boost domestic electronics manufacturing which is majorly dominated by imports. As per estimates, Indian electronics market will grow to the tune of USD 400 billion by 2020 of which USD 300 billion requirement will be met through imports in absence of corrective measures.