Business Standard

In electronic­s exports, TN jumps to top on Apple push

- SHINE JACOB Chennai, 18 April

Tamil Nadu is making the most of Apple's aggressive India push. The southern state now boasts the highest tally of electronic­s goods exports in the financial year ended March 31, 2024 (FY24), ahead of Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh (UP).

The state posted a 78 per cent increase in exports from $5.37 billion in FY23 to $9.56 billion in FY24.

This is around 33 per cent of the total electronic­s exports of the country and helped it surpass the $9 billion target set by the state a few months ago.

One major reason for this is the ‘China Plus One’ strategy adopted by global majors like Apple.

As a result, its contractor­s such as Foxconn and Pegatron, along with suppliers like Tata Electronic­s and Salcomp, have contribute­d to the rise of Tamil Nadu as the country’s electronic hub last year.

Tamil Nadu Industries Minister TRB Rajaa said that as the electronic­s sector was only beginning to grow, the state was "racing towards another all-time (high) next year, and many years to come".

Multiple firms such as Foxconn, Salcomp, Flex, Tata Electronic­s and Pegatron are planning expansion of operations.

In FY24, Karnataka became the number two exporting state with $4.62 billion contributi­ng to 16 per cent of the national exports, followed by UP with $4.46 billion worth of exports and 15 per cent of the national share.

The other top states in the list are Maharashtr­a ($3.09 billion), Gujarat ($2.75 billion), Delhi ($1.51 billion),

Haryana ($698.3 million) and Telangana ($610.62 million).

"Tamil Nadu is setting the pace, proving that our strategies and investment­s create a fertile ground for high-quality job opportunit­ies and robust economic growth. This is just the beginning, and the best is yet to come," he said.

In 2022, JP Morgan had said that Apple was considerin­g making 25 per cent of its handsets in India by 2025 and shifting 5 per cent of global production of the iphone 14 to India by the end of 2022.

Following this, the world's largest electronic­s maker Foxconn, best known for making Apple’s iphones, had announced it will put $500 million in its India unit to expand production.

Media reports also suggested that the firm may increase staff strength from around 15,000 to 18,000.

 ?? ?? Tata Electronic­s assembles iphones at its Hosur plant in Tamil Nadu
Tata Electronic­s assembles iphones at its Hosur plant in Tamil Nadu

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