China Out Of Indian Developmental League
Last updated on February 14th, 2023 at 12:42 pm
China has definitely lost its trade favor with India as it lost a contract of building a Delhi-Mumbai expressway. The reasons given by the ministry of highway and road transport was that there were some evident security concerns.
According to Nitin Gadkari, the road transport and highway minister, Chinese companies are anyway going to be barred from developmental projects, even in the form of joint ventures.
The previous news of security breach in many components that were being sourced from Chinese firms has alerted various Indian ministries of possible use of malware. India is now planning to move ahead with its Atmanirbhar initiative, reducing dependency on foreign players like China.
The two Chinese companies that emerged as the lowest bidders are both subsidiaries of Jiangxi Construction Engineering Corporation and were offering the project at a cost of about Rs. 800 crore each. The ministry is now on the lookout for anyone else who can provide a bid lower than the ones provided by the Chinese counterparts.
Further, Gadkari has also stated that if there are any Chinese companies already involved in any bidding processes or have won tenders, these bids would stand cancelled and would be open for fresh bidding. However, this move will not affect ventures with other foreign nations. “Even if we have to go for foreign joint venture in the areas of technology, consultancy or design, we will not allow Chinese,” clarified Gadkari.
Read: IOC member: No Summer Olympics in 2021 means no Winter Olympics in Beijing.
Moving closer to the self reliance initiative spearheaded by PM Narendra Modi, the Centre has plans to give further impetus to the domestic industry. For this, there is initiative to relax norms that will allow more Indian firms to become eligible for highway projects. “We have taken a decision to relax norms for our companies to ensure that they qualify in bidding in large projects. I have directed the Highways Secretary (Giridhar Aramane) and NHAI Chairman (SS Sandhu) to hold a meeting for relaxing technical and financial norms so that our companies can qualify to work,” the Minister further added while addressing a press conference via video call.
