Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團) internationally, has won approval to invest at least US$1 billion more in a plant it is building in India that is to make Apple Inc products, a major ramp-up in its goal of building a hub beyond China.
The world’s biggest assembler of iPhones plans to spend that amount on top of the US$1.6 billion it earlier set aside for the 120-hectare site close to Bengaluru’s airport, people familiar with the matter said.
The new capital would bankroll additional capacity for Apple devices, including the iPhone, they said.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Including the most recently approved spending, Hon Hai would have set aside about US$2.7 billion for the site, set to become the centerpiece of the its manufacturing capabilities in India.
The company, Apple’s most important manufacturing partner, has ramped up its budget for the plant at least once this year. It started out in early this year with plans to invest just US$700 million in the complex, located in the southern technology hub of Karnataka.
The Karnataka government on Tuesday said that it had approved another 139.11 billion rupees (US$1.7 billion) of overall Foxconn investment in the state, without specifying details.
The company could also use the site to produce parts for its nascent electric vehicle business, people said.
Apple’s partners are accelerating efforts to establish a supply chain in India at a time when Chinese firms are edging away from the nation amid tensions between New Delhi and Beijing.
India’s Tata conglomerate, another Apple partner, is seeking to build one of India’s biggest iPhone assembly plants in Tamil Nadu state.
India’s regulatory scrutiny of smartphone makers such as Xiaomi Corp (小米) and Vivo Communication Technology Co (維沃) has also discouraged some Chinese companies from setting up operations in the world’s second-largest smartphone market.
The US dollar was trading at NT$29.7 at 10am today on the Taipei Foreign Exchange, as the New Taiwan dollar gained NT$1.364 from the previous close last week. The NT dollar continued to rise today, after surging 3.07 percent on Friday. After opening at NT$30.91, the NT dollar gained more than NT$1 in just 15 minutes, briefly passing the NT$30 mark. Before the US Department of the Treasury's semi-annual currency report came out, expectations that the NT dollar would keep rising were already building. The NT dollar on Friday closed at NT$31.064, up by NT$0.953 — a 3.07 percent single-day gain. Today,
‘SHORT TERM’: The local currency would likely remain strong in the near term, driven by anticipated US trade pressure, capital inflows and expectations of a US Fed rate cut The US dollar is expected to fall below NT$30 in the near term, as traders anticipate increased pressure from Washington for Taiwan to allow the New Taiwan dollar to appreciate, Cathay United Bank (國泰世華銀行) chief economist Lin Chi-chao (林啟超) said. Following a sharp drop in the greenback against the NT dollar on Friday, Lin told the Central News Agency that the local currency is likely to remain strong in the short term, driven in part by market psychology surrounding anticipated US policy pressure. On Friday, the US dollar fell NT$0.953, or 3.07 percent, closing at NT$31.064 — its lowest level since Jan.
Hong Kong authorities ramped up sales of the local dollar as the greenback’s slide threatened the foreign-exchange peg. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) sold a record HK$60.5 billion (US$7.8 billion) of the city’s currency, according to an alert sent on its Bloomberg page yesterday in Asia, after it tested the upper end of its trading band. That added to the HK$56.1 billion of sales versus the greenback since Friday. The rapid intervention signals efforts from the city’s authorities to limit the local currency’s moves within its HK$7.75 to HK$7.85 per US dollar trading band. Heavy sales of the local dollar by
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday met with some of the nation’s largest insurance companies as a skyrocketing New Taiwan dollar piles pressure on their hundreds of billions of dollars in US bond investments. The commission has asked some life insurance firms, among the biggest Asian holders of US debt, to discuss how the rapidly strengthening NT dollar has impacted their operations, people familiar with the matter said. The meeting took place as the NT dollar jumped as much as 5 percent yesterday, its biggest intraday gain in more than three decades. The local currency surged as exporters rushed to
RSS