The Hindu : Business : Solar cells offer huge scope

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Tuesday, Feb 19, 2008
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Solar cells offer huge scope

Anand Parthasarathy

BANGALORE: The manufacture of solar photo voltaic (SPV) cells may provide the next big opportunity for the Indian semiconductor industry, allowing it not only to meet the expected surge in local needs, but to address an emerging $40 billion global market, delegates at the third annual vision summit of the Indian Semiconductor Association (ISA) were told.

India’s first Fab City coming up in Hyderabad had seen seven confirmed allotments with investments of $7 billion committed over a 10 year period, Union Minister of State for Industries, Jairam Ramesh, said in his inaugural remarks.

In addition another five proposals totalling $1 billion in investments had been approved, while three more that were under government’s active consideration, had pegged their planned investments at over $5 billion, Mr. Ramesh added.

In his opening remarks, Special Secretary at the Central Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, M. Madhavan Nambiar, pointed at the planned expenditure of $2 billion for Indian e-governance initiatives over the next two years: Equipping over one billion citizens with smart cards was in itself “a tremendous growth paradigm, not to be missed by the semiconductor industry”.

Stanley T. Myers, President and Chief Executive of the global industry association, Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International (SEMI), which has just signed an MoU with ISA, said India had “great potential as a strategic electronics manufacturing centre and could play a very important role in the semiconductor design chain”.

Solar photovoltaics now a $13 billion industry was poised to grow to $40 billion by 2012, he added.

ISA Chairman S. Janakiraman, told The Hindu that the Association estimated the growth in the design side of the Indian semicon industry at 20-23 per cent.

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