The Hindu : Tamil Nadu News : Motorola plant inaugurated

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Monday, Apr 28, 2008
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

Motorola plant inaugurated

Special Correspondent

State to get more investments, says Karunanidhi

— Photo: S.R. Raghunathan

NEW FACILITY: (From left) Henry Mohan, Director, Motorola India Operations, Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi, A.Raja, Union Minister for Information Technology and Communications, and Soumitra Sana, country president, Motorola India, at the inauguration of the Motorola plant at Sriperumbudur near Chennai on Sunday.

SRIPERUMBUDUR: Over the next few months, the State will get more investments than what was obtained in the last 16 years, said Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi on Sunday.

Inaugurating the Rs 172-crore Motorola telecom manufacturing facility in Sriperumbudur, he reiterated that he would like to make Sriperumbudur the largest hub in the world for mobile phone handsets manufacturing.

He congratulated Motorola officials for setting up the facility within two years from the date of signing of a memorandum of understanding and for investing Rs. 172.4 crore as against their commitment of Rs. 135 crore.

“Already Nokia plant here has become one of the world’s largest handset manufacturing facility in terms of volume. Samsung is also in the process of establishing this facility in Sriperumbudur. Sony Ericsson is making handsets here through Foxconn and Flextronics,” he said.

Stating that the potential for mobile phone growth in India was huge, he said mobile phones could improve the economic condition of self-employed persons, improve connectivity and awareness in rural areas and enable farmers to get information and better prices for their produce.

The Chief Minister said that apart from mobile handsets, Sriperumbudur was fast becoming India’s largest manufacturing hub for electronics hardware and automobiles, including components. With the commissioning of Renault-Nissan project by 2010, the total capacity for car manufacturing in six projects located in Irungattukottai-Sriperumbudur-Oragadam-Maraimalai Nagar corridor would exceed 12 lakh cars per annum.

“This will make this corridor one of the top 10 car manufacturing centres of the world. Apart from car manufacturing, this corridor will produce a range of other automobiles including commercial vehicles, earth moving and construction machinery, tractors etc, making it the Detroit of Asia,” he said.

3G services auctioning

Union Minister for Information Technology and Communications, A. Raja said that auctioning of 3G services and its rollout would be done during the present UPA government tenure. “Modalities are being worked out and the auctioning of it would happen within the next couple of weeks,” he added.

Union Commerce Secretary, Gopal K. Pillai said that within two years and two months from the date of issue of notification of Special Economic Zone, the country had received an investment of $16 billion and created 1.76 lakh jobs.

In his welcome address, Soumitra Sana, country president, Motorola India, said that it is their first owned and operated facility that supported an integrated telecom products portfolio, including GSM and CDMA mobile devices and networking equipment.

The facility was spread over 270,000 sq m and had the capacity to produce over 12 million phones and 6,500 base terminal stations each year.

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