Nokia to start work on Chennai unit from Mar 11

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will lay the foundation stone for the $150 million Nokia mobile phone manufacturing facility at Sriperumbadur on
March 11, Communication and IT Minister Dayanidhi Maran said today.

Inaugurating the Swedish telecom major Ericsson's first R&D Centre in India here, Maran said there was a race between Swedish and Finnish companies to set up manufacturing units in India.

American major Foxconn would be signing an MoU with the Tamil Nadu government on March 3 for setting up a mobile handset manufacturing facility at Sriperumbadur, Maran said.

The company is planning to invest $110 million for the project, which also envisages setting up an R&D centre and a plant for producing PCBs.