(Reuters) – The German government is preparing billions of euros of new investments into the country’s semiconductor industry, Bloomberg News reported on Thursday.
The subsidies are expected to be about 2 billion euros ($2.11 billion), Bloomberg reported, citing two people who attended an event about the funding plans.
A spokesperson from the Economy Ministry said he could not confirm this figure and told Reuters the ministry plans to provide needs-based funding “in the low single-digit billion range.”
The ministry published a call for chips companies to apply for new subsidies in mid-November, for projects that contribute to a strong and sustainable microelectronics ecosystem in Germany and Europe, following the European Chips Act (ECA).
The European Chips Act aims to reduce the continent’s dependence on Asian suppliers for advanced semiconductors by subsidising the local development of large chip factories.
“Funding is to be provided for the establishment of modern production capacities that significantly exceed the current state of the art,” the spokesperson from the Economy Ministry told Reuters.
($1 = 0.9477 euros)
(Reporting by Chandni Shah in Bengaluru and Maria Martinez in Berlin; editing by David Evans)
