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Foxconn’s change of heart on chips is a warning to India
Unless the country lowers tariffs and improves conditions for investors, its hopes of becoming an electronics manufacturing hub are likely to fizzle out.
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Foxconn’s reasons for not proceeding with the project were vague, and the company insists that it remains committed to manufacturing in India.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Mihir Sharma
India has grand plans to become an electronics manufacturing hub. Given that level of ambition, we need to be prepared for setbacks – such as the news this week that Taiwan-based Foxconn would not, in the end, build a semiconductor factory in the western Indian state of Gujarat.
This was a huge disappointment to the country. Getting some semiconductor fabrication to happen onshore was a crucial part of India’s plans to create a home-grown, end-to-end electronics manufacturing supply chain. Those plans, it turns out, may have been both too ambitious and not ambitious enough.
