JSW group will bring down China imports to zero in 2 years: Parth Jindal

As the clamour to boycott Chinese products grows amid a stand-off between the Indian and Chinese armies in eastern Ladakh, several companies have indicated they would cut imports from the neighbouring country and support the government’s self-reliance theme.    

Parth Jindal, managing director of JSW Cement, said on Thursday that the JSW group, promoted by his family, would be bringing down its imports from China to zero within two years.

While Jindal was not available to share the detailed strategy to achieve this, he made the group’s plans public via Twitter. “The unprovoked attack by the Chinese on Indian soil on our brave jawans has been a huge wake-up call and a clarion call for action. We @TheJSWGroup have a net import of $400 million from China annually and we pledge to bring this down to zero in the next 24 months,” he tweeted. Sources in the company said the current Chinese imports included machinery parts for its steel, energy, and cement businesses.

“The idea is to strengthen the supply chain within the country and in that process become self-reliant to whatever extent we can. It is a directional shift that we are looking to make,” Jayant Acharya, director (commercial) at JSW Steel, told Business Standard.

Since the bloody clash in the Galwan Valley last month, in which 20 Indian soldiers lost their lives, a number of domestic companies have asserted they stand with the policy of manufacturing products locally through ‘Make in India’. “We can reduce our dependency on products from China by developing a large-scale, efficient and cost-effective domestic industrial ecosystem,” S N Subrahmanyan, chief executive officer and managing director at L&T, had said last month. 

While the firm’s defence division does not import from China, its other businesses source products from that country. Earlier this month, Anil Agarwal, executive chairman of Vedanta Resources, had given a call to give up on Chinese goods. “Most power plants in India are imported from China. BHEL, a PSU, is very capable of producing the best power plants in the world. If given full autonomy and either corporatised or privatised, without laying off any personnel, it can do wonders for #atmanirbharIndia,” Agarwal tweeted on June 17.

Much before the current India-China dispute, Reliance Industries had divulged its intention to not rely on China. During US President Donald Trump's visit to India in February, RIL Chairman Mukesh Ambani said Reliance Jio had not bought a single Chinese component. "We’re going to do 5G. We’re the only network in the world that doesn’t have a single Chinese component," Ambani reportedly told Trump. The US government has been putting a lot of pressure on India to keep China's Huawei off the 5G equipment suppliers’ list. After the latest Chinese incursions into India, Huawei's future in India looks uncertain.