Even as India intends to give sops as part of its ambitious Production Linked Incentives (PLI) scheme, electronics major Samsung may miss the bus. As per an Economic Times report, the reason could be ‘discrepancies in invoicing’. However, the report also says that Samsung officials are in talks with the government to make amends.
In 2021, Samsung had put forth a claim of Rs 900 crore as incentives as it had achieved Rs 15,000 crore worth of additional sales. But, in order to stake claim for it, the company had to produce handsets with a cost of around Rs 15,000 crore. But the company was not given the sops, all thanks to ‘some discrepancies in the company’s invoices’, the report added.
“They had some issues in valuations of their invoices. Now their invoices are very accurate, and they are being verified. But what is gone is gone for the first year,” the publication quoted a senior government official.
Investments mandatory for PLI
It should also be noted that the IT ministry had made it mandatory that companies must invest in order to get the sops. But in the case of Samsung, no such queries were made, the report added.
The PLI scheme
It was in August 2020 that the government started the PLI scheme. The outlay of the entire project was Rs 40,951 crore for a period of five years. As part of the scheme, graded incentives or cashbacks are offered that are worth 6 per cent of incremental sales of goods for the first two years.
Samsung, the only company to reach the target
The report added that it was only Samsung that met the incentive target set for the scheme. All thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic, other companies did not meet the requirements. It was then that the government decided to increase the time to six years.
Other companies that were approved for the incentives were Foxconn and iPhone-makers Wistron and Pegatron.
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