JSW group will bring down China imports to zero in 2 years: Parth Jindal

While the firm's defence division does not import from China, its other businesses source products from that country.

As the clamour to boycott Chinese products grows amid a stand-off between the Indian and Chinese armies in eastern Ladakh, several companies have indicated they would cut imports from the neighbouring country and support the government’s self-reliance theme.

Parth Jindal, managing director of JSW Cement, said on Thursday that the JSW group, promoted by his family, would be bringing down its imports from China to zero within two years.

While Jindal was not available to share the detailed strategy to achieve this, he made the group’s plans public via Twitter. “The unprovoked attack by the Chinese on Indian soil on our brave jawans has been a huge wake-up call and a clarion call for action. We @TheJSWGroup have a net import of $400 million from China annually and we pledge to bring this down to zero in the next 24 months,” he tweeted. Sources in the company said the current Chinese imports included machinery parts for its steel, energy, and cement businesses.

“The idea is to strengthen the supply chain within the country and in that process become self-reliant to whatever extent we can. It is a directional shift that we are looking to make,” Jayant Acharya, director (commercial) at JSW Steel, told Business Standard.

Since the bloody clash in the Galwan Valley last month, in which 20 Indian soldiers lost their lives, a number of domestic companies have asserted they stand with the policy of manufacturing products locally through ‘Make in India’. “We can reduce our dependency on products from China by developing a large-scale, efficient and cost-effective domestic industrial ecosystem,” S N Subrahmanyan, chief executive officer and managing director at L&T, had said last month.