Foxconn plans to anticipate production in the country
Valor Econômico
Foxconn wants to anticipate, from November to July, the beginning of the production of iPads and iPhones, the tablet computers and third-generation phones by Apple, in Brazil, said the President of Foxconn, Terry Gou, in a letter to President Dilma Rousseff. The Executive asked the support of the Government for the measures required for the operation of the new production line, which much likely will be installed in the plant of the company in Jundiaí, São Paulo. The Government should soon issue a regulation to give tablets the same tax incentives granted to laptops today.
The Minister of Science and Technology, Aloízio Mercadante, said the Government will not include the tablets among the beneficiaries of the current incentive rules, but it will elaborate tax exemption rules specific to the product. One of the requests Gou made to Dilma in the letter, is the support for the immediate sending of 200 Brazilian engineers to China, to receive the training to work in the plant in Brazil. Gou said he also want to bring Chinese technicians to the country and, for both cases, he would need greater agility in the release of passports and visas. Representatives of the Government and Foxconn may meet next week to discuss the issue and analyze the process of selection of engineers and technicians.
According to Mercadante, the Government is concluding the technical studies to evaluate the billionaire project promised by Gou. The Minister denies the Taiwanese businessman has committed himself to invest only half of that amount, waiting for partners in the country to complement the investment. "What he said is they will not be a minority partner in the business", said Mercadante, foreseeing the financial support of the BNDES (National Development Bank) for any Brazilian partners. Companies are already interested, talking with the Government, with consulting experience in the area and positive forecasts regarding Brazil as a production base for electronic displays in Latin America, says Mercadante.
"We made a study on the investment agenda, which has matters on taxes, logistics, training of staff and security", he added. He assured the current incentives for the production of semiconductors in Brazil meet most demands of the company. The Government is already discussing with another company an incentive of "hundreds of millions of Dollars" in the area of information technology. "The most substantial part (of the demands of Foxconn) is met, and adjustments will have to be made for a part", said the Minister. "They want agility in the customs procedure, and the location of the plant is something that still has to be defined", he said. "They need efficient logistics, broadband access, a lot of energy, access of quality, international airport, and good infrastructure in the surroundings".
In the letter to Dilma, Gou made sure to give guarantees they will respect the Brazilian labor laws "of quality" and assure there will be good working conditions in the premises of the company. The Government says it believes the businessman sees, in Brazil, a chance to change the image of the company, tarnished with allegations of overexploitation of labor, fed by a wave of suicides in the Chinese industrial complex - which works as a model to the project announced for the investment in the Brazilian territory.
The measures to exempt from taxes and facilitate the import of components for the production of tablets and phones for Foxconn shall be issued by the Federal Income Office. According to Mercadante, Dilma Rousseff is personally committed to negotiating with the company. Depending on the conditions obtained, the production of the facilities in Brazil may even extend the target market, besides Latin America, with ambitions of a share of the market in the United States, said the Taiwanese businessman, in an effort to gain the goodwill of the Brazilian Government.