India is seeking to be more involved in world supply chains and serve as an alternative to China through output-incentive plans and the growth of its domestic consumer market, Indian Minister of Finance Nirmala Sitharaman said on Monday.
So-called production-linked incentive schemes covering 13 manufacturing sectors including for semiconductors “are bringing in global value chains into India,” Sitharaman said at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington.
“By doing that, we hope to have production of many of these large, bulk-manufactured goods which can go from India” to meet both international and local demand, she said.
Photo: Bloomberg
“It’s unrealistic to think that everything will get out of China,” Sitharaman said, adding that firms have become prudent and are diversifying due to the supply chain disruptions, giving an opportunity to Asia’s third-largest economy.
A close ally of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Sitharaman is also India’s first female finance minister. She is on a week-long trip to the US to attend the World Bank and IMF spring meetings.
India last month laid out an ambitious target of hitting US$2 trillion annually in overall exports by 2030 as the South Asian nation makes a renewed push to become a top choice for companies shifting supply chains away from China.
Sitharaman gave the example of mobile phones — India in 2014 produced very few devices and the industry has grown to become one of the world’s biggest exporters.
Over the weekend, Indian media reported that Tata Group is set to complete the takeover of Wistron Corp’s (緯創) iPhone plant in Bengaluru by the end of this month in a deal that would give the nation its first homegrown production line for Apple Inc’s products.
Wistron, Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) and Pegatron Corp (和碩) — three Taiwanese manufacturing partners of Apple — began assembling iPhones 11 to 14 in India last year. While India makes up just a fraction of iPhone output, rising exports bode well for Modi’s plan to make the nation an alternative to China as factory to the world.
Apple is betting on India to diversify its assembly operations beyond China amid strained relations between Beijing and Washington.
Apple chief executive officer Tim Cook has scheduled a trip to open the iPhone maker’s first stores in India next week, people familiar with the matter said, after Apple last week said that it would open a store in Mumbai on Tuesday next week and another in New Delhi on Thursday next week.
In between the two store openings, Apple has sought a meeting for Cook with Modi, one of the people said, asking to remain anonymous discussing private plans.
Apple did not immediately respond to an e-mail seeking comment on Cook’s visit.
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