India increased the incentive scheme for producing servers and laptops in the country by 131%, to £1.7 billion. Global businesses, including top vendor Apple, were said to be interested.
The government claims that after growing with iPhones, Apple is "seriously evaluating" producing MacBooks in India. As the government pressures Apple to produce more products in India, emulating the success with iPhones, IT & electronics minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said talks with the business have been constructive. “They are seriously evaluating,” Vaishnaw told the media. While refusing to get into specifics of discussions with various companies, Vaishnaw said top mass laptop companies such as Dell, HP, Acer, and Asus are among those, who are looking at India favourably now that the scheme has been made comprehensive in terms of the incentives.
The Cabinet gave its approval to the decision to increase the rewards under the production-linked incentive (PLI) plan for IT hardware such laptops, tablets, all-in-one PCs, servers, and ultra tiny form factor devices. While the earlier scheme had earmarked £735 million towards PLI incentives, the government had to increase the allocations after industry’s feedback that the earlier plan did not cover financial disabilities arising out of making in India, as against imports.