India to Amend Regulations to Boost Semiconductor and Automotive Manufacturing

Tokyo: India will amend regulations and introduce new rules within two months to address concerns raised by semiconductor and automotive component manufacturers, commerce and industry minister Piyush Goyal said Monday.

In a fireside chat with Nikkei Asia in Tokyo, the minister said he met two companies seeking to bring semiconductor and automotive-component manufacturing to India and that their concerns were resolved during the discussions. He also rejected the idea of India being viewed merely as a “plus one” destination.

“I have assured them that within the next two months India will amend its regulations, bring in new rules to accommodate their request and ensure that they will have absolutely no problem as they bring manufacturing into India,” he said.

Goyal explained that the government has significantly simplified the Bureau of Indian Standards framework and is working to ease the approval process, including for suppliers that may not be covered under the revised regulations.

“There would be occasions where the demand may be only about importing goods from another country…which is not conducive for fair trading practices and which is often known to supply goods at predatory prices,” he said.

“In those situations, obviously it is very difficult to meet the demands of certain sectors of industry, and I am not apologetic about it, I am very upfront and frank about this when they meet me,” he added.

He added that the Union Cabinet has approved the Semicon 2.0 for the development of India's semiconductor design and manufacturing ecosystem.

“Together, with the private sector, we are looking to seed about $50 billion of semiconductor and associated industry in the next year, year and half. Once that is done, we will come out with semiconductors 3.0 because for us this is a journey,” he added.