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The central government has approved a Rs 500 crore project to make Ranjangaon in Pune, an electronics manufacturing cluster, in a move that is being seen as an apparent bid to make up for Maharashtra losing back-to-back big-ticket projects to Gujarat.
Announcing the project, Minister of State for Electronics and IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar on Monday said the cluster will attract major investments from manufacturers, generate thousands of jobs and put the state in the league of locations that have emerged as vibrant electronics production hubs in the country.
The announcement came amid a political slugfest over mining giant Vedanta switching to Gujarat for its Rs 1.53 lakh crore chip factory and Maharashtra also losing out on the Rs 22,000-crore Tata-Airbus transport aircraft project.
While former Maharashtra minister Aaditya Thackeray has criticised the Eknath Shinde-led government for letting go of these projects, the Maharashtra chief minister has stated that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah have assured of big projects for the state.
“To make Maharashtra into an electronics hub, we have approved an Electronics Manufacturing Cluster project in Ranjangaon, Pune. The total investment of the government on this EMC will be about Rs 500 crore,” Chandrasekhar said at a briefing.
The Electronics Manufacturing Cluster (EMC) is targeted to attract an investment of over Rs 2,000-3,000 crore, with the potential to create 5,000-6,000 jobs in the coming years.
Ranjangaon will join the growing roster of locations such as Tamil Nadu, Noida and Karnataka that are making an aggressive pitch to emerge as a vibrant electronics hub.
India is making an all-out effort to position itself as an electronics and tech manufacturing powerhouse and a global partner in supply chains, as the world looks at alternate production sites outside China.
To a question whether the latest Ranjangaon announcement should be seen in the backdrop of opposition’s barbs on projects slipping away from Maharashtra, the IT Minister asserted that massive long-term opportunities lie ahead in booming electronics manufacturing space, and said: “The pie is big enough for all states.”
“Today, there is a competitive situation. There is a competition within nations for attracting investments…within India, investors are examining whether they should go to Noida, Tirupati, or Maharashtra, so there is also competition at that level…that will happen. It is an advantage of our system that states are competing intensely for investments, that for the investor it is creating a positive environment,” Chandrasekhar said, adding that India’s techade opportunity should be viewed as a long-term opportunity.
India has been wooing marquee investors and iconic brands in areas such as mobile phone manufacturing, as well as semiconductor and electronics production, and its vibrant market and enabling policies are turning out to be the sweet spot for many tech giants.
To strengthen the infrastructure base and providing avenues for creating robust electronics manufacturing ecosystem in the country, IT Ministry introduced EMC 2.0 scheme on April 1, 2020. It was introduced with an objective to create robust infrastructure along with common facilities and amenities, including ready built factory sheds, plug-and-play infrastructure for attracting anchor unit as well as its supply chain to set up their manufacturing facility in the country.
Overall, the scheme is targeted to attract new investment in the electronics sector and projected to generate about 10 lakh employment opportunities in coming years.
Considering Maharashtra’s strategic importance towards industrial activity and to unleash new opportunities for electronics sector in the state, IT Ministry accorded an approval to the Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation (MIDC), the state agency, on Monday for the development of EMC over an area of 297.11 acres at Ranjangaon Industrial area, Pune, Maharashtra.
The EMC has strategic connectivity to road, railway and airport for seamless transportation of logistics to reduce lead time-to-market which will increase the production and will help to make the product economical. The state highways connecting Shirur to Satara passes through the EMC.
The overall cost for development of the EMC is Rs 492.85 crore, out of which Rs 207.98 crore will be funded by the Government of India and remaining contribution of Rs 284.87 crore will be infused by MIDC.
The anchor client IFB Refrigeration has already taken 40 acres of land parcel and started its construction with projected investment of Rs 450 crore, according to a background note of the ministry.
Of 297.11 acres of land, 200 acres of land is reserved for industrial plot allotment of varied size along with plug-and-play facility and Ready Built Factory (RBF) sheds to electronics industry/allied manufacturers to create electronics supply chain ecosystem.
All the plots will be equipped with infrastructure requirements like roads, drainage, power and water supply, truck parking, business trade and convention centre.
Infrastructure work has commenced to ensure the completion within next 32 months.
Chandrasekhar also announced that the Ministry of Electronics and IT plans to give a boost to Rs 1,000 crore Semicon India Future Design programme to support semiconductor design startups in the state and a roadshow will be held soon. He informed that C-DAC, Pune will be the nodal office for this purpose.
“While 92 per cent of all mobile phones used by Indian customers were imported in 2014, now 97 per cent of all mobile phones used by Indian customers are domestically manufactured,” he said.
(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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