No plans for manufacturing in India: Intel

New Delhi, Sept 5: World's largest chip maker Intel Corporation today reiterated that due to India's delay in announcing a semiconductor policy, the country had lost to other Asian countries for Intel's plan to set up its manufacturing plant.

''Manufacturing is important to Intel. We were in talks with the Indian government but it was slow in coming up with a policy in time,'' said Intel Corporation Chairman of the Board Craig R Barrett.

Intel had announced it will set up manufacturing plants in China and Vietnam following delays in the India.

The 35-billion dollar company reassured that ''India is still high on the list and the company will definitely consider it in the next round of investment.

''As of now, we don't have any plan to set up a plant here.

There is enough capacity at this point and the investment plans are drawn years in advance,'' said Mr Barrett.

Intel plans to build a 2.5-billion dollar facility in China to make chip wafers and the plant is expected to begin initial production in the first half of 2010.

According to a study by the India Semiconductor Association, consumption of electronic equipment in the country would rise to 363 billion dollars by 2015 from 28.2 billion dollars in 2005 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 29.8 per cent pushing the total market for semiconductors to 36.3 billion dollars by 2015.

UNI