Mumbai, (Asian independent) Maharashtra has beaten at least 5 states to win a stupendous Rs 2.06 lakh-crore investment by Vedanta Group-Foxconn partnership in the sunrise semiconductors chips and display fabrications sector in Pune, officials said here on Tuesday.
The deal, the single biggest investment of its kind in Maharashtra — coveted by Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Telangana and Himachal Pradesh — was signed in the presence of Chief Minister Eknath Shinde and Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis.
Earlier this year, Vedanta Group — a mining giant based in Mumbai — had partnered with the Hon Hai Precision Industry (Foxconn) with plans to invest $15 billion in phases over the next five-ten years to manufacture semiconductor chips and displays in India.
Accordingly, Vedanta-Foxconn will invest Rs 166,800 crore and Rs 40,000 crore from other sources for its 1,000-acre proposed manufacturing facility at Talegaon near Pune.
The understanding caps a series of meetings held by the state government in the past few months to bag the prestigious deal, including the last one held in June by the erstwhile Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government’s former Industry Minister Subhash Desai, preceded by a Vedanta team survey of Pune to set up its plant in February 2022.
This mega-project will create around 200,000 direct and indirect jobs, total revenues of GST worth Rs 125,230 crore comprising Rs 37,500 crore State GST and the rest Rs 88,079 as Inter-State GST.
The state will provide a slew of incentives including 25 per cent capital subsidy, subsidised water and power supply, and land at concessional rates, and Shinde-Fadnavis assured all other help for the project to come up without hiccups in three years.
The Indian semiconductor industry is estimated to grow more than four times to over $60 billion in the next four years, and Fadnavis said the state was keen that this industry – available in only four nations – should come here.
Incidentally, when he was the Chief Minister, Fadnavis had visited the Foxconn plant in China in 2015 where the initial discussions were held to bring the electronics giant to India, but its progress got bogged down due to strained relations between India and China.
