Apple has requested tax breaks for its suppliers to set up a manufacturing hub in India, Reuters reports. The company has been actively pursuing its own incentives in India to offset the costs of moving more of its production to the country and has now begun putting pressure on the Indian government to extend the same concessions to its suppliers. Apple started assembling iPhones in India earlier this year in order to break into the Indian market, but the two sides have been negotiating about Apple’s list of “prerequisites” to get to the point where Apple is building the iPhones from scratch in India.
Apple wants duty exemptions on the import of raw materials and capital equipment for 15 years to reach a deal, but government officials have said that request would require the creation of new policies that apply to other device manufacturers as well. “They want the same treatment to be given to the component manufacturers; the tax concessions, they want everything. But then some kind of policy will have to be evolved,” the unnamed government official said.