India to finalize partner for chipmaking project

The Indian government will finalize its partner for the country's electronic chipmaking project by the end of the fiscal year.

According to an official involved in the project, the government is in the "advance stages" of finalizing its partner for the setting up of the wafer fab, The Times of Indiareported Tuesday.

The country's department of electronics and information technology also said in the presentation made before Kapil Sibal, India's communications and information technology minister, that the electronic chip making plant is likely to be operational by 2014.

The project with an estimated investment of INR 250 billion (US$4.59 billion), to set up two semiconductor wafer fabrication manufacturing facilities in the country, had been approved by India's Cabinet in April 2011, a separate report on The Economic Times noted. 

This comes after worries of rogue programs getting embedded in important chips may compromise the security of critical installations, the Economic Times report said. The government also hopes the project will improve innovation, research and development of semiconductors, and help create 28 million jobs by 2020.

A Gartner report in April last year also found India's semicondctor market to grow 20 percent year-on-year and reach revenues totaling US$9.2 billion in 2012, becoming the fastest growing market for semiconductor consumption.