Under the revamped IT hardware Production Linked Incentive (PLI) plan, India may approve investment bids worth 4,000 crore. Last month 40 proposals worth ₹5,000 crore were received by the ministry of electronics and IT under the IT Hardware PLI 2.0 scheme. All are unlikely to be approved because the government has a certain budget for incentives.

 

"Earlier, we kept an investment target of ₹2,430 crore in the scheme. But there was an overwhelming response, forty proposals were received indicating a total investment of ₹5,000 crore. Amount needed to fund all the proposals will be ₹23,000 crore but the allocated budget is currently ₹17,000 crore," joint secretary, ministry of electronics and IT, Amitesh Kumar Sinha told ET.

 

"So, probably we'll not select everybody. And in case we're not selecting, investments will come slightly lower than ₹5,000 crore and investments of about ₹4,000 crore may occur," he explained.

 

The six-year PLI scheme for IT hardware-laptops, tablets, all-in-one personal computers, servers, and ultra tiny form factor devices-is designed to attract top hardware manufacturers. In May of this year, PLI Scheme 2.0 for IT gear was approved. PLI 1.0 was issued in 2021 at a cost of Rs 7,350 crore.

 

On semiconductor manufacturing unit proposals, Sinha who is also the CEO of the Indian Semiconductor Mission (ISM) said he is "very hopeful that in one or two years, many companies will come directly, and we'll see many more joint ventures too in future".

 

The government had received three fab bids and two semiconductor display manufacturing unit proposals.