Samsung stays put from participating in India’s PLI scheme

India’s Production Linked Incentive scheme has garnered quite several tech giants wanting to participate in the scheme, however, the South Korean tech giant Samsung Electronics has recently reported that it will not be participating in the PLI scheme.

It stated that the company will not participate in this scheme for telecom networking equipment since it does not want to invest freshly in a market where it has just one client. Buy the top management of the South Korean company has stated that they might explore such opportunities in the future.

the decision of restraining to join the telecom scheme was conveyed by the Samsung India officials to the telecommunications department (DoT) in a video conferencing meeting on Wednesday.

However, it’s worth noting that Samsung has been supplying equipment to Reliance Jio’s 4G telecom network and is also working for supplies for its 5G trials. Its plant is located in Vietnam, South Korea, and China where there is sufficient capacity to manufacture for Jio’s requirements. And the imports from Korea and Vietnam are at zero duties through the free trade agreement route.

“Hence, Samsung did not find the business need to invest in another new facility in India right now since it already enjoys zero import duties and more so since it has just one client in the country.”

the decision of Samsung is understandable and it seems that its reason to opt-out of PLI is quite reasonable for the movement. However, now it seems that with the backing out of Samsung, the government of India is now betting on other large companies like Nokia and Ericsson to make investments under the scheme.

Companies like Nokia India have already confirmed that they will participate in the scheme, and Ericsson is also not opposed to the idea of participation.

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