Ahead of the Lok Sabha elections, Nirmala Sitharaman is on a day-long tour of Gujarat, with meetings scheduled in Ahmedabad and Vadodara on Saturday.
Hours after techpreneur Elon Musk announced that he is postponing his visit to India, which was scheduled from April 21-22, to “later this year” owing to “Tesla obligations”, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said the country is making policies to make sure big companies are attracted to India for investment, especially in light of industries expressing concerns around China.
“When big companies show interest to come to India, we certainly make sure to make it attractive for them to come here and invest, so in that process if there’s something to discuss, we’ll certainly discuss, but whatever we do, we do through policies and it has helped. Especially after China started being a concern for many industries or many experts in domain areas, we have made policies in such a way that we are making India an attractive destination, both for manufacturing and for services,” said Sitharaman, while addressing a press conference in Ahmedabad on Saturday.
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Sitharaman’s response came to a media query on how the Union Finance Ministry perceives Musk’s postponement of his India trip in light of the incentives he has sought for from the Indian government for manufacturing in India.
Ahead of the Lok Sabha elections, Sitharaman is on a day-long tour of Gujarat, with meetings scheduled in Ahmedabad and Vadodara on Saturday.
Musk took to X to announce that his India trip is being postponed owing to “very heavy Tesla obligations”. The postponement comes days after the Centre held its first set of consultative meetings with automobile industry players, including Tesla representatives, to evolve guidelines to operationalise the new EV policy, released last month.
The new policy is expected to pave the way for Tesla to import cars into India at lower duties, as it eases duty for a limited number of EV imports for manufacturers setting up facilities in India with a minimum investment of Rs 4,150 crore. Tesla had been seeking tariff concessions as a precondition for establishing a manufacturing plant in India.
Notably, the Union Finance Ministry on April 16, ahead of Tesla chief Musk’s visit to India where he was due to meet up with Indian spacetech startups, rules of the Foreign Exchange Management Act were amended to operationalise the ministry’s earlier decision to allow up to 100 per cent foreign direct investment in the space sector through three categories of liberalised entry routes.
The notification allowed for 100 percent FDI in the space sector in the category of manufacturing and operation of satellites, satellite data products and ground segment and user segment, out of which up to 74 percent would be through the automatic route and government nod would be required for investment beyond 74 percent.
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First uploaded on: 20-04-2024 at 15:53 IST
