Move to make India preferred base for semi-conductors

NUTS & BOLTS

The Ministry of Information Technology is to announce a policy shortly to make India a preferred destination for the manufacture of semi-conductors and other high technology IT products.

A proposal to use the existing vehicles of viability gap funding and the India Infrastructure Finance Company Limited (IIFCL) to create a window to provide equity participation and/or viability gap funding to new ventures. The window will be open for three years to accelerate investment.

Turning the small scale sector competitive
The National Manufacturing Competitiveness Council (NMCC) has finalised a five-year National Manufacturing Competitiveness Program. Ten schemes have been drawn up, including schemes for promotion of ICT, mini tool rooms, design clinics and marketing support for SMEs.

Electrification of villages
All States have signed memoranda of understanding to implement the Rajiv Gandhi Grameen Vidyutikaran Yojana. Some 10,000 villages will have been electrified by the end of the current year, and in 2006-07, four times as many more villages will gain the benefits of electricity.

The health mission
The National Rural Health Mission to be strengthened. In 2006-07, more than 200,000 Associated Social Health Activists (ASHA) will be fully functional, even as over 1,000 block level community health centres will provide round the clock services. Allocation to NRHM to go up from Rs 6,553 crore to Rs 8,207 crore.

Educating the girl child
A total of 1,000 new residential schools for girls from SC, ST, OBC and minority communities are to be opened in 2006-07 under the Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalya Scheme. Rs 128 crore is to be provided for this project, and an additional sum of Rs 172 crore will be available during the year.

To further incentivise the girl child who passes the VIII Standard examination and enrols in a secondary school, a sum of Rs 3,000 will be deposited in her name, and she would be entitled to withdraw it on turning 18.

Leveraging Self Help Groups (SHGs)
In the last two years, credit-linkages were established with 801,000 Self Help Groups (SHGs). The credit disbursed to these SHGs: approximately Rs 4,863 crore.

Now, another 385,000 SHGs are to be credit-linked in 2006-07, even as NABARD opens a separate line of credit for financing farm production and investment activities through SHGs.

Cluster development model
A Ministerial group is to look into a "cluster development model" to promote manufacturing and bolster industrial towns.

Some 30,000 small scale sector borrowers will get insurance cover through the Credit Guarantee Trust, the corpus of which would be raised from Rs 1,132 crore to Rs 2,500 crore in five years, with Rs 118 crore set aside for the purpose this year. Small scale enterprises in manufacturing and services are to be treated alike.