FILE PHOTO: Tata Sons Chairman Natarajan Chandrasekaran speaks to shareholders during the Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) annual general meeting in Mumbai, India, June 16, 2017. REUTERS/Danish Siddiqui/File Photo
GANDHINAGAR, India (Reuters) -Tata Group is close to announcing plans to build a new semiconductor fabrication plant in India's Gujarat state this year, Tata Sons chairman Natarajan Chandrasekaran said on Wednesday at an investment summit.
The comments came at the Vibrant Gujarat Global Summit, a business event being held in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's home state in one of his last major efforts to draw investments before a re-election bid.
Chip manufacturing is a key plank of Modi's business agenda, but initial bids to offer $10 billion in incentives to the chipmaking industry have floundered, with some proposals stalled or cancelled.
Tata Group "is on the verge of concluding and announcing a huge semiconductor fab in Dholera (of Gujarat), and we are about to complete this negotiations and start in 2024," Chandrasekaran said.
Tata Group will also begin construction of a 20 gigawatts battery storage factory in Gujarat in the next couple of months, he added.
At the summit, South Korea's Simmtech said it would open a chip component plant in Gujarat alongside the upcoming semiconductor testing and packaging facility of U.S. chipmaker Micron.
(Reporting by Aditya Kalra, Dhwani Pandya and Aditi Shah; Writing by Bansari Mayur Kamdar and Munsif Vengattil; Editing by YP Rajesh and Jamie Freed)
