US tech giant Apple Inc has to come to India for manufacturing, sooner or later, as it will not like to miss the growth in India, sources at the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) said, reported Business Line citing source.
Various sources at the Ministry said the company cannot ignore the fact that others like Samsung and Xiaomi are doing well in India, and that India will not give in to its ‘extra’ demands for setting up manufacturing here.
“Their demands are different from others and without their assuring jobs or benefit for Indians, how can we tweak policy for them? If they create jobs for, for instance, one lakh Indians or invest in land here, then maybe we can think of something,” a top official at MeitY told Business Line.
The official said that the government has already expressed India’s stand and also explained that India is different from China. “Xiaomi brought their suppliers recently to India to show India has friendly policies for manufacturing and Cisco also had brought their suppliers before that,” said another official.
According to him, the new policy on electronics manufacturing (National Electronics Policy) would make it worthwhile for “all the major players to step up manufacturing in India, including Apple. It will be friendly for all manufacturers in the country.”
The proposed policy will focus on various areas including medical electronics and automobile electronics. It will also leverage the country’s strengths in electronics design, given that nearly 75 per cent of global technology majors have research and development presence in India, the official further said to the English Daily.
