The Perte of semiconductors will mark the Government's economic agenda this week

Sánchez will meet with directors of large companies to present the plan

MADRID, 23 May. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The Council of Ministers will approve this Tuesday the Perte of semiconductors, the largest to date with more than 11,000 million euros of public investment with the aim of attracting chip manufacturers to the country.

In this way, the Executive seeks to reinforce the industrial sovereignty and strategic autonomy of Spain in the face of the collapse of the supply chain as a result of the pandemic and the war in Ukraine, which has created a deep shortage of these components, especially for the manufacturing industry. the automotive

The circumstance occurs that the plan will be approved in a Council of Ministers that will be chaired by the first vice president, Nadia Calviño, since Sánchez will be at that time seeking to attract investors at the economic forum in Davos, in Switzerland.

The president has a busy schedule of bilateral meetings with executives from Intel, Macron, Cisco and Qualcomm. Precisely, the meetings will begin this Monday with the attendance of Sánchez at a private dinner organized by Intel's CEO, Pat Gelsinger.

Both will repeat the meeting in a private meeting on Tuesday first thing in the morning, before Sánchez's intervention in the Forum.

During the morning, Sánchez will also meet in the morning with the CEO of Micron, Szanjay Mehrotra, and the CEO of Qualcomm, Cristiano Amon. In the afternoon it will be time to meet with the CEO of Cisco, Chuck Robbins.

Sánchez will close his agenda in Davos by attending a private event organized by the CEO of Qualcomm on Tuesday night.

"We want to make Spain a benchmark and avant-garde place for the manufacture of microchips and semiconductors on the European continent", remarked the president during the inauguration of the Spain-Qatar Business Forum last Wednesday.

The coronavirus pandemic has triggered a sense of urgency in Europe and the United States to attract and expand the number of semiconductor factories across their borders to reduce current dependence on Asia, especially Taiwan.

In fact, the European Commission presented its European Chip Law in February, which planned to mobilize 43,000 million euros of investment so that 20% of the world's semiconductors are produced in Europe in 2030.

In parallel, several European countries have launched an Important Project of Common European Interest (IPCEI) in microelectronics that seeks to develop a new generation of technology in this field.

Spain has presented eight projects for this IPCEI in collaboration with companies and employers such as Ametic, with the aim of gaining weight after a call where other countries had more prominence.

Semiconductor factories require large-scale investments, mainly due to the complexity of the microchip manufacturing process.

At the European level, Intel announced that it would build an industrial complex with two factories in Magdeburg with an investment of 17,000 million euros. Likewise, it has another large project in Ohio (United States) for which it will build another two factories for 20,000 million dollars (almost 19,000 million euros at current exchange rates).

In the case of Spain, to date, the investments announced in this sector have been mainly in the field of design with an alliance between Intel and Vodafone to design Open RAN chips in the innovation center that the operator is setting up in Malaga .

Likewise, as part of its investment plan in Europe, the American company also announced a collaboration agreement with the Barcelona Supercomputing Center to create an advanced computing laboratory for the development of the new generation of microchips.