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.
