PM to lay foundation stone for mobile facility

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday will lay the foundation stone for a dedicated mobile handset manufacturing facility in Tirupati in Andhra Pradesh.

Modi, who is visiting Andhra Pradesh to lay the foundation stone for the new state capital Amaravati near Vijayawada, will later fly to the temple town to do the ground breaking for the handset manufacturing facility.

Shri Venkateswara Mobile & Electronics Manufacturing Hub at Tirupati will create more than 10,000 jobs within a year. The hub is expected to contribute at least 5 percent of all-India target of 15 lakh jobs by 2019.

Indian Cellular Association (ICA) president Pankaj Mohindroo said Andhra Pradesh was fast turning out to be a preferred destination for mobile handset and component manufacturing companies.

"Suitable regulatory interventions and proactive support provided by the state administration during the past 4-6 months are turning out to be the clinching factors to turn these investment decisions in favour of the state," Mohindroo said in a statement

Mohindroo is also chairman of Fast Track Task Force (FTTF), set up by the central government to promote mobile handset manufacturing eco-system in India.

"Foxconn has already started operations in Andhra Pradesh for manufacturing brands like Xiomi, Gionee. Other important brands like Micromax, UTL (Karbonn) and Celkon would be kick-starting their manufacturing operations soon," he added.

ICA is also working with the Andhra government to set up design centres and incubation centres to establish the state as a truly global scale mobile handset manufacturing hub.

The central government has set up the FTTF to catalyze and re-establish a robust mobile handsets and component manufacturing eco-system in India by 2019 with the objective of producing some 500 million handsets and generating employment opportunities for more than 15 Lakh people.