A joint venture between the Indian conglomerate Vedanta and the electronics manufacturing giant Foxconn has ensconed the Dholera Special Investment Region (SIR) near the city of Ahmedabad in Gujarat for the establishment of its semiconductor and display manufacturing facility, according to a senior State Government official.
In September last year, a joint venture of Vedanta and Foxconn inked a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Gujarat government to invest Rs 1,54,000 crore to establish the facility in the state. This was the largest corporate investment in the history of independent India. This will be the first semiconductor manufacturing facility in India.
The joint venture company has not announced the precise location of the facility at that time. “The joint venture entity of Vedanta and Foxconn has chosen Dholera SIR for the establishment of their semiconductor and display manufacturing facility, following a rigorous site analysis and talks with Gujarat government officials. The Indian government is in the final stages of evaluating the project,” said the official.
In September last year, the MoU was signed in Gandhinagar in the presence of Ashwini Vaishnaw, Minister for Railways, Communications, Electronics, and Information Technology. On that occasion, Gujarat Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel had stated that both firms would invest Rs 1,540,000 crore to establish the facility in Gujarat, which would generate one million jobs. Patel had also stated that his administration would assist in the establishment and success of the facility.
Incidentally, when addressing a campaign rally in Bhavnagar in November ahead of the Assembly elections, Prime Minister Narendra Modi gave a strong signal that the mammoth semiconductor plant will be constructed at Dholera SIR, approximately 100 kilometres from Ahmedabad.
Under the “Gujarat Semiconductor Strategy 2022-27” released by the state government in July of last year, this project is set to receive massive subsidies and incentives, in the likes of zero stamp duty on land purchase and subsidised water and energy, etc.
A Government official previously stated that Gujarat was the only state in the nation to have such a focused policy for the semiconductor and display fabrication industries. Under this strategy, qualified projects will get a 75 per cent subsidy on the first 200 acres of land purchased for the establishment of manufacturing units.
For the first five years, the qualified projects will receive high-quality water at a rate of Rs 12 per cubic metre. To attract investors under the strategy, the state government has also announced that it will compensate investors for the stamp duty they pay for the first time when purchasing, leasing, or transferring land.
Ambrish Parajiya, one of the directors of GAP Associates and one of the pioneer realtors of Dholera, welcomes this august announcement. He says, “A new era of next-generation industrialization begins to dawn in India, and there is tremendous scope for growth in Gujarat. Dholera SIR is the harbinger of that growth.”
