World’s largest handset maker – Apple was offered import tax concessions by the central government for its India manufacturing facility. According to reports by Reuters, the Cupertino based phone maker has to increase its domestic component sourcing in a phased manner to avail the tax concession.
Apple demanded tax concession of different types ever since the CEO Tim Cook originally made the proposal for handset manufacturing in Asia’s fastest growing handset market. Several of its demands were rejected by the government as such concession will led to similar demand from other firms.
Midway, Apple demanded a 15-year tax holiday for all components it would import for the Bengaluru facility. But the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology which is already running the M -SIP (Modified Special Incentive) programme which is a capital subsidy scheme for the promotion of domestic electronic manufacturing found it too demanding.
Apple is expected to start production from Bengaluru where its Taiwanese contract manufacturer Wistron has a production facility.
India is one of the biggest market in the world without notable domestic handset makers. Chinese manufactures including Oppo, Vivo, Redmi etc are making explosive campaigns on lower end segments in recent times. On the other side, Apple has faced declining sale in China which compelled the company to concentrate on India’s growing market.
Besides, US, Apple has production facilities in China and Brazil at present.
