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Our Bureau

Hyderabad, Oct. 12

Various elements of the Fab City project that aims to house multiple semiconductor companies are being laced together and most of the infrastructure for the project is getting into the execution mode.

The Fab City site of 1,200 acres was recently realigned to pave way for the outer ring road project being developed to decongest the city dotting with satellite townships.

The Chairman and Managing Director of Andhra Pradesh Industrial Infrastructure Corporation Ltd (APIIC), Mr B.P. Acharya, said that the State has carved out a special purpose vehicle for the project, which has been awarded the status of special economic zone with APPIIC becoming the nodal agency for clearances.

Global investors are lining up as various aspects of the related infrastructure such as international airport, dedicated water supply, power and industrial gases are now being tied up.

For a water intensive semiconductor industry, which requires about 20 million gallons a day, Hyderabad was the only city that could offer such assured supply.

This was possible as just about that time, the State had completed a 180 million gallons per day water evacuation project from the river Krishna.

SemIndia, Signet Solar, Titan Energy, Solar Semiconductor, Moser Baer among others are in the process of executing their projects and the State is in discussions with Videocon, Hindustan Semiconductor, and even Mr June Min, who has come up with a fresh proposal for nanotech Park, Mr Acharya said.

The mandate for supply of clean water is being entrusted to Singapore Utilities, and Serbana has provided the master design.

This project is complimenting the Hardware Park wherein HCL Infosystems, Millennium Appliances, Astra Micro, Ananth Technologies and Tidewater are in the process of setting up units, he said.

Alongside this, efforts have been initiated to develop the electronic hardware special economic zone and together these projects would complete the entire semiconductor ecosystem, he said.

Speaking at a meeting hosted by the Indian Semiconductor Association on developing clusters, Mr Acharya said that the State Government has accorded top priority for development of Fab City and has thus far invested about Rs 58 crore for water supply, Rs 62 crore for dedicated power and other infrastructure.

Later, the Chairman of SemIndia, Dr Vinod Agarwal, said that the first phase of the SemIndia project, with an investment of $100 million, would be ready by June 2008.

Dr Agarwal said that an analysis of some of the countries promoting semiconductor industries shows that most of them have thrived due to encouragement and infrastructure provided by their Governments, be it Taiwan, Korea, Japan or China.

More Stories on : Infrastructure | Hardware | Andhra Pradesh

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