In a recent development, government officials from New Delhi and Tamil Nadu have met with Taiwanese electronic manufacturing services (EMS) giant Foxconn’s founder Terry Gou about the possibility of selling the Nokia Chennai plant. Government has been trying to revive the factory of Nokia which was closed down in since September 2013.
According to one of the official sources who spoke to Economic Times said that the government officials have broken the ice with Foxconn. Now, the next task at hand is to ensure the aspirations of Foxconn and the Indian government are aligned, and to make sure the Tamil Nadu government also finds it a worthy enterprise to get Foxconn to reopen the factory.
The Chennai factory was one of the biggest handset manufacturing plant in the country. At its peak it used to manufacture 15 million handsets a month and also employed 12,000 people. The factory was closed down because of tax liability of Rs 21,000 crore.
This can be great for the government if they are able to sell the factory to Foxconn and revive one of the biggest handset manufacturing companies in the country.
By Atanu Kumar Das