Proposals for fresh foreign direct investment worth millions of dollars have been received in response to India’s soft-bonded information technology units (S-BIT) scheme. IBM Corp, Hewlett- Packard Co, Samsung Electric Co, the LG Group, Acer Inc, Nokia Oy, Motorola Inc, Ericsson NV and Siemens AG – have all put in proposals. The scheme has also attracted substantial domestic investment by electronic, IT and communication firms. These include proposals by TVS Electronics, Wipro Peripherals, HCL, Godrej Peripherals, ITI, Bharati Telecom, Natelco and Simoco Corporations. The scheme was instigated by India’s National Task Force on Information Technology and Software Development in order to bring down duties imposed on domestic and export manufacture to make Indian products more competitive with competing countries such as Korea, Hong Kong, Philippines, Singapore and Taiwan.
