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Apple Not Allowed To Open Stores In India (reuters.com)
ffkom writes: Reuters reports: "India has said Apple Inc must meet a rule obliging foreign retailers to sell at least 30 percent locally-sourced goods if it wishes to open stores in the country, a senior government official told Reuters. A change in legislation last year exempted foreign retailers selling high-tech goods from the rule, which states 30 percent of the value of goods sold in the store should be made in India. However, Apple's products were not considered to be in this category, said the official, who has direct knowledge of the matter." Now just imagine what Apple stores in the U.S. would look like if 30% of their offerings had to be made in the US... "They did ask for a waiver but didn't provide any material on record to justify it. The decision was taken only after a thorough examination of their application," the source said. Apple planned to open at least three stores in India by the end of 2017. Separate sources said Apple talked with the Indian government about a relaxation of the rule before it filed an application to open stores in the country in January. In a report from The Wall Street Journal (Warning: source may be paywalled), one of India's government officials said, "We are sticking to the old policy. We want local sourcing for job creation. You can't have a situation where people view India only as a market. Let them start doing some manufacturing here." Currently, Apple sells its products "through a network of Indian-owned distribution companies and retailers."
Apple will open its wallet and everything will change. Indian bureaucrats and officials care about one thing: bribe money.
They didn't do the needful.
30% of the VALUE of goods sold. If it was just numbers they could stock a few hundred locally made iPhone covers to meet the rules
You are ignoring the fact that India was colonized and used as nothing but as a market for centuries and sucked dry. Those scars will take a long while to heal and those are lessons not easily forgotten. The word "Free Trade" has a different meaning to an Indian (as well as to those who also endured the Opium Wars and the Black Ships incident in their history). They had completely different experiences with it in their history. This is a rational strategy from those experiences.
Likewise the idea of protectionism has cold war era connotations in US; not so in India. It was a necessarily strategy for India to protect itself from neo-colonialism when its capacity to compete was never allowed to mature. India started rolling back these defenses (which naturally hold back growth - security vs. speed) gradually once it felt its industries and services are maturing and have a chance to actually compete in a free market. But that is a gradual process rather than a binary choice.
> Why should the people of one country be privileged over the people of any other? Just because they were born there?
That said, I generally agree with the sentiment. But even the majority in US don't agree with that.
Well I'm not sure what a "good lying job" is, but ... solution my ass. India is a huge exporter and makes lots of money out of selling things overseas, but they don't want imported goods sold in their own country? If other countries adopted this kind of measure, India would suffer more than most countries.
Where did it say they don't want imported goods. What I read was if a foreign company wants to set up shop 30% of value of the goods needs to be made in india. Seems fair enough to me, as it stands every apple store has almost 100% of the value of products made in china.
Why do you think it's ok to abuse the shit out the world like that? These guys over here will work for nothing so we can slave them, then take the product and sell it for way way more than it cost to make over to these guys who have lots of money (but not for long because all the jobs are being fucked off overseas because it cheaper.) Meanwhile we're taking in all the money from underpaying and overcharging. If you really want a global market then a person in chinatown, china needs to get paid the same as a person in bumsville, usa or ruskigrad, russia etc and the product should cost the same no matter where you go. But they don't do they? They abuse the system from all sides making their huge pile of money huger and by extension making everyone else poorer. Fuck this so called 'globalism'.
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