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BARCELONA: Japan ’s Sony has decided to open a factory in India for making mobile phones and televisions and the facility will also be used to service markets in Africa and the Middle-East. Kenichiro Hibi , head of Sony’s Indian operations, said the budget’s provisions on incentivizing local production has prompted the company to look into the issue urgently. “We will decide on the factory very soon,” Hibi told TOI at the Mobile World Congress here. FM Arun Jaitley had thrown in provisions in the Union budget that make it cheaper for companies to manufacture in India. In mobile phones, the FM increased the excise duty differential between domestically-manufactured phones over imported phones to 11% against the 5% now.The move will see the prices of imported phones go up even as locally-manufactured ones will get cheaper. Top companies like Samsung and homegrown Micromax are already manufacturing some of their devices in India. Sony currently imports all its products into India from plants in Thailand, Malaysia, China and Japan.This will be the second time when it opts for local manufacturing. Sony used to manufacture in India earlier, but shut its facility in 2004 as it preferred to opt for imports from cheaper locations. A relatively-smaller business size in India at that time did not justify a production facility as the company found it more efficient to source from its factories overseas, especially in view of India's free-trade agreements with some of the countries.>>> @toi_tech >>> TOI_tech