Centre urged to focus on IT hardware manufacturing

The Tamil Nadu Government is acquiring land in and around Chennai for the information technology sector.

One new company is added in every three days in the State, and especially in and around Chennai. "We need to make land available to companies in a short time," said Dr C. Chandramouli, Tamil Nadu IT Secretary, at panel discussion on `IT Hardware - Unleashing India's manufacturing potential' here.

Companies like Nokia, Flextroncis, Motorola, Hon Hai/Foxconn, ASPOCOMP (Finland), NERA and Spelmech are setting up presence in and around Chennai, and many more are in the pipeline, he said.

The IT secretary said Tamil Nadu continues to be the best among the Indian States for investments. There are over 2,700 foreign direct investment proposals valued at $6.80 billion, representing 9.12 per cent share of FDI to India.

Dr Chandramouli, quoting third-party data, said wage cost for skilled worker in Chennai was $67 and for technicians $89-133, compared to $222-$556 in China. Similarly, for technicians the cost in Chennai was $355 compared to $482-703 in China, and for senior/general managers in the city was $1,333-1,444 as against $1,667-2222 in China, he said. The wage cost in Chennai was based on 48 hours per week and in China 44 hours per week.

Hardware policy soon

The State Government will soon announce an exclusive policy for IT electronics hardware manufacturing sector. Hitherto, this sector was part of the overall manufacturing sector. However, being a niche area, the sector needs a lot of attention and discussions are going on with industry players on the policy, he said.