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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.

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

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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.

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