The Hindu Business Line : Talks with Intel on Feb 15: Maran

"Official talks with Intel will be held on February 15," said Mr Dayanidhi Maran, Communications and IT Minister, while speaking at the India Semiconductor Association summit here.

"We have started the negotiating process and have met the Finance Minister," he added.

"This is a crucial year for India in semiconductor manufacturing. The industry is still at a nascent stage, but the year looks promising, he said. "We will soon come out with a Made in India chip," he promised.

Announcing that Andhra Pradesh was "the winner of the race for Fab City", Mr Maran said 1,200 acres of land have been allotted and a posh housing locality also offered to SemIndia, a group of NRIs who are investing in a fabricating unit (chip manufacturing facility) in the country. The plant would generate 1.5 million job opportunities on its completion.

The three cities of Bangalore, Chennai and Hyderabad were competing to offer the best economic proposition to SemIndia.

Explaining the reason for selecting Hyderabad finally as the location for FabCity, Mr Maran said SemIndia "fell into rough weather with TN" and while Karnataka was a stiff competitor, investors were more comfortable with Hyderabad. "Though Karnataka and AP were proactive, the latter was faster," he said.

He also mentioned that Nokia would be setting up their plant next month in Chennai. Assuring the audience that the Government was "aware of the role" it had to play and would be supportive, Mr Maran said the Government would be "proactive".

"We have learnt from the Chinese, Taiwanese and German models and will offer a different model here," he said. "The doors are open for chip manufacturers," he said.

He added that the Government was looking forward to the employment this industry would generate. "We expect 36 lakh jobs to be created by 2015. I want that," he said.

Mr Maran also said the next challenge would be a flat screen display manufacturing facility. "The future is in flat screens, they are capturing desktops," he said. He also said fabs for hard disks and CD and DVD ROMs were next in line.