India wants to keep Apple building. The government has proposed extending a tax break for foreign firms that supply manufacturing equipment to contract manufacturers, a change drafted with iPhone assembly squarely in mind.
Under a draft bill reviewed by Reuters, the exemption would run until 31 March 2041, well beyond the 2031 cut-off set when the measure was introduced in February.
It spares overseas suppliers from Indian tax on the high-end machinery they hand to assemblers such as Foxconn and Tata.
The move is the latest in a run of incentives India has used to pull electronics production onshore, from a 5-year manufacturing subsidy aimed at iPhone and Samsung makers to broader industrial support. The through-line is the same, to make it cheaper to build phones in India than to import them.
The specific problem the draft fixes is a familiar one for contract manufacturing. Assembly plants often run on equipment owned by a foreign parent or partner, and without an exemption that arrangement can trigger a tax charge in India, the kind of friction that makes a company think twice about where it puts a line.
