Govt to introduce special package of incentives establishing fabs

New Delhi, Jan 10 (UNI) The Government today said it will introduce a special package of incentives establishing Financial and Business Solutions (FABS) in India and will also consider a proposal for Electronics and IT hardware manufacturing policy.

''The policy will aim at rationalisation of tariff structure on capital goods, inputs, unification of manufacturing for domestic market and exports, registration of international patents, transfer of state-of-the-art technology (TOT) and research and development,'' said communication and IT minister Dayanidhi Maran here while inaugurating the exhibition and seminar, 'Elitex 2007'.

Mr Maran also said he wanted to bring down the cost to the consumer as the year 2007, being the Year of Broadband in India, and added it could happen only if the domestic traffic is kept within the country.

For this he urged the National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI) to make all efforts to make the domestic internet traffic a viable proposition for content providers, network operators and consumers.

Speaking on the occasion, National Manufacturing Competitive Council (NMCC) Chairman V Krishnamurthy emphasised the need for greater use of Information Communication Technology (ICT) in all sectors for a balanced growth of Indian economy.

He said there is an urgent need to strengthen the manufacturing base of IT hardware and necessary steps should be taken in this regard.

There should be a balanced growth between the industrial, services and agricultural sectors and imbalance should be minimised by use of ICT in all aspects of economic development.

He said hardware industry has not kept pace with the progress made by the software sector and still there is a dependence on the imported inputs.

The Government has supportive policies in order to provide right impetus for development of hardware in the country, he added.

During the inauguration ceremony, Mr Maran also released the technologies developed recently by the participating industries in the event including National Resource Centre for Free and Open Source Software (NRCFOSS ), Bharat Operating Systems Solution (BOSS ) Linux.

NRCFOSS has been promoted by the Department of information technology to address the issues related to Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) in the Indian context and to explore how it can play the twin roles of helping to bridge, the digital divide as well as strengthening the Indian software industry.

About 10 countries including Korea, Colombia, Botswana, Bulgaria Lebanon, Syria and Mauritius have participated in the two-day event.

UNI