Last week, China’s Great Wall Motors (GWM) signed an MoU (Memorandum of Understanding) with the Government of Maharashtra to invest and develop an automobile manufacturing plant in Talegaon, which the company purchased from General Motors earlier this year. In a phased manner, GWM promised an investment totalling 1 billion USD (over INR 7,600 crore) and the generation of over 3,000 jobs. All that, and a lot more, has just come to a screeching halt.

The Maharashtra Govt. has frozen developments for GWM India’s and two other Chinese projects – one each for Hengli Engineering and Foton-PMI Electro Mobility JV (Joint Venture). The reason? The recent increase in disturbances between India and China, which also resulted in the death of 20 Indian soldiers. Here’s what Subhash Desai, a cabinet minister of the Government of Maharashtra, said:

The decision has been taken in consultation with the Union government. These were signed prior to the killing of 20 Indian soldiers on the Indo-China border. The ministry of external affairs has advised not to sign any further agreements with Chinese companies.

There’s no other way of putting it – this development comes as a shocker to Chinese trio mentioned above. PMI Electro Mobility, which is in a joint venture with China’s Foton, had plans to develop an INR 1,000-crore (approximately 132 million USD) facility which would create 1,500 employment opportunities. As for Hengli Engineering, an INR 250-crore investment opportunity comes to a halt, which would have gone into the company’s second phase of expansion at Talegaon. Upon success, it would have generated 150 jobs.

The three projects were amongst the twelve the state government signed during its campaign Magnetic Maharashtra 2.0. The other nine include firms from South Korea, USA and Singapore. As per Desai, the government is actively processing those MoUs. As things stand, there’s no word on what the future holds for the three Chinese companies’ India plans. What do you think will, or should, happen?

Story source: ETAuto