The Hindu Business Line : `UHP material vital to grow hardware sector'

MR K.K. Jaswal, Member-Secretary of the National Commission on Enterprises in Unorganised/ Informal Sector, has said that lack of infrastructure, investment, integration and clear road maps caused the IT hardware sector to lag behind, while the growth of software and services exports continued to be `rosy'.

In comparison to the Nasscom estimate of the size of IT software and services, which it pegged at Rs 55,000 crore for 2003-04, the growth of hardware exports was at Rs 5,600 crore. Of this, electronic material was a meagre 3.29 per cent.

Inaugurating the two-day international symposium on `Ultra pure materials' here on Monday, he attributed this poor state of affairs to the lack of proper infrastructure and investment. "All these problems needed a consortium approach," he said.

"The basic materials required for the hardware should be absolutely pure to fabricate the devices using them. It is, however, very difficult to purify materials beyond certain limits," he said.

It required extensive research and development and furthering of the knowledge base for purification to obtain ultra high pure (UHP) material. "This is essential to sustain the developments in electronic devices and reach further frontiers in IT," Mr Jaswal said.

The symposium was organised by the Centre for Materials for Electronics Technology.

Mr M.J. Zarabi, Chairman and Managing Director of Semiconductor Complex Limited (Chandigarh), said the demand for ultra pure material was increasing rapidly for IT needs.