'Govt working on subsidy scheme for electronic manufacturers'

Government is in the process of finalising guidelines for the subsidy scheme aimed at companies manufacturing electronic items such as chips and other advanced equipment, a senior official said.
"We have introduced an element of production subsidy, now we are in process of finalising guidelines and since there are different kinds of projects, we are looking for specific technical inputs," Additional secretary DeitY Ajay Kumar was quoted as saying in an Assocham statement.
Kumar invited suggestions from the industry to take into consideration the elements that require subsidy.
"Where we need support in that is, to be able to pinpoint what needs to be subsidised and how, some work is going on, the consultants are working on it, but any specific inputs from industry are more than welcome," he said.

Kumar said the production subsidy is very substantive and a huge differentiator with 10 per cent of the turnover for 10 years and it is meant for projects that are capital intensive and possibly do not look attractive by themselves.
Kumar also shared that the government is working on fabless chip design policy which aims to support the companies involved in chip design.

He emphasised on the need to manufacture low-priced laptops in India to spur computer manufacturing.
"Maybe a price point of Rs 10,000 and it cannot be a device which can be seen as a low grade version of laptop," Kumar said.

The government is also formulating a project to push the demand for PCs and other IT infrastructure that would be launched during the course of about next three months to provide fundamental facilities of education, health, skilling and others to every village that is connected.
"After due approval, we hope to start implementing this scheme by March 2016," Kumar said.
He also said that about 20-25 interested parties have made presentations to the Canara Bank Venture Capital, the nodal agency for Electronics Development Fund (EDF), which will fund projects to boost entrepreneurship in the fields of electronics manufacturing. The EDF managers have zeroed on 6-7 cases.

The EDF is getting registered under the alternative investment fund (AIF) category.
"That process, I am told should be over sometime in December, it is already before the SEBI (Securities Exchange Board of India) and there is a certain timeline which SEBI has to follow to register fund like this," Kumar said.