 "Foxconn submits preliminary plan to revive Nokia unit in Chennai")
Foxconn has submitted a preliminary proposal to revive the Nokia facility at Sriperumbudur, which was shut in 2014 causing more than 15,000 direct employees to lose their jobs. The state has said that Foxconn has recently come forward to takeover and revive the plant.
"We have also received a preliminary proposal from the company for the revival. However much of the revival process would depend on the IT issue," said the state in a memorandum submitted by the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister O Panneerselvam to the Prime Minister today at New Delhi.
The state government is taking efforts to revive the Nokia plant in constant coordination with the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY), Government of India by actively engaging with Foxconn, the prospective promoter of the revival process, said in the Memorandum.
The state asked the Prime Minister's intervention is essential to ensure that the Income Tax authorities support the initiatives of the State Government and Deity to revive the global manufacturing facility and restore the Electronic Manufacturing Hub at Sriperumbudur.
The Prime Minister had, in February 2015, announced in the Rajya Sabha that his government would take all necessary steps to revive the Nokia unit.
The Nokia factory at Sriperumbudur in Tamil Nadu was one of the largest mobile phone manufacturing facilities in the world. The Government of Tamil Nadu had signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Nokia in April 2005 and had supported teh development of a global electronic manufacturing hub.
Accoridng to the Tamil Nadu government, the retrospective amendments to tax laws introduced in 2012 by the then UPA government forced the Nokia plant to shut down in November 2014, causing more than 15,000 direct employees to lose their jobs.
The assets at the facility, which employed over 30,000 employees directly and indirectly, were frozen by Income Tax department over a Rs 21,000 crore income tax dispute, following which the Finnish company suspended operations in the facility in November 2014. In between, Nokia sold the mobile handset business to Microsoft. Following the closure of the Chennai unit, almost all the ancilliary companies, including Foxconn, stopped operations in the SEZ.