Monday, November 25, 2013: Ravi Sannareddy, co-founder and managing director of Sri City feels that the next wave of investment in Andhra Pradesh-based Sri City special economic zone (SEZ) could be from the electronics segment.
“There is a lot of interest from companies in the electronics space. Besides Malaysian electronics giant Proton, there are a couple of firms that have shown interest, one being from China,” Sannareddy told The Hindu. He added that SEZ plans to increase its capacity by three times. At the same time it will be working on its goal to reach full scale with 300 firms, and attract huge investments in the coming years.
The current situation is that the SEZ is housing above 100 companies and attracted Rs 125000 million investment commitment along with 20,000 jobs. It already has presence of majors like Cadbury, Isuzu, Alstom, Colgate Palmolive and PepsiCo. According to the report, the total investment realised so far was over Rs 65,000 million, and it would reach Rs 125000 million once the companies were developed in full scale in the coming days, he said.
Among the investments, Danieli, Italian steel equipment major invested Rs 7500 million in the SEZ. Also, Alstom, the French transport equipment firm has made an investment commitment of Rs 5000 million, which will be rolling out its first train set for Chennai Metro in 2014.
“Exports from the SEZ had also registered a steady growth at Rs 2350 million in 2012-13 against Rs 1440 million in 2011-12. Shipments in the first half of this fiscal had crossed Rs 1750 million. We can easily cross Rs 3400 million in terms of exports this fiscal. Total imports of raw material are close to Rs 4660 million,” Sannareddy added.
