CHENNAI: The government has cleared 49 acres in Sriperumbudur for Taiwanese phone-maker Foxconn to renew its manufacturing operations in the State, according to Industries Minister M C Sampath.
Speaking to the media on the sidelines of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) flagship event ‘Connect 2017’, the minister said that the land was given to the Taiwanese company on the promise that it would be able to generate 5,000 jobs by January and 30,000 jobs in the next three years.
Foxconn has already employed 7,000 people in the State and informed that it would add another 5,000 new jobs by January, he said.
The plant in Sriperumbudur was shut down in February 2015. The Taiwan-based electronics equipment-maker was a major supplier of motherboards to Nokia and had to close down its facilities due to lack of orders from Nokia, which shut operations on November 1, 2014 after a `10,000-crore tax dispute with the Income Tax department.
The minister also said he was urging the Centre to set up Aero Defence Park in Coimbatore as it had the required infrastructure. State Information Technology Minister M Manikandan said that the state would be unveiling its Information Technology policy this month. The focus will be on Internet of Things (IOT) and other technologies. However, he refused to divulge any more.
Earlier, Sanjay Tyagi, director, Software Technology Park of India, said that the state was the biggest beneficiary of the India BPO Promotion Scheme. He said that 4,300 seats had been filled up including the latest bid of 600 seats by Amazon in Coimbatore. Initially, the allocation was only 3,000 seats but since the demand was higher, the Centre has allocated another 3,000 seats, he added.
P Ravichandran, Chairman-CII State Council, urged companies in hardware manufacturing and electronics to capitalise the IT resources, including the recent aerospace park in Oragadam. This could be a big game changer for TN, he added.