India once insisted on using domestic machinery, but the construction site left everyone stunned—forced to urgently re-purchase Chinese equipment!

Reuters reported on March 27 that India has officially approved certain state-owned enterprises, including Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL) and the Steel Authority of India, to purchase key equipment from China, marking a substantive relaxation of procurement restrictions on China since 2020.

Following the Galwan Valley clash in 2020, India imposed stringent approval procedures for Chinese companies participating in its procurement, effectively excluding them from the massive public procurement market valued at $700 billion to $750 billion.

Domestic Indian firms failed to fill the gap left by the withdrawal of Chinese equipment. During construction at an Indian power plant, engineers discovered that BHEL’s equipment significantly lagged behind Chinese counterparts in critical technical indicators such as thermal efficiency, leading to increased power generation costs.

Even more critically, delivery timelines stretched from the original 36 months to a staggering 60 months, severely hampering project progress. As a result, frequent complaints emerged: equipment shortages have caused numerous projects to stall or delay, seriously affecting industrial production and energy security.

Industry assessments indicate that India faces a supply deficit of up to 40% in heavy electrical transmission equipment such as transformers and reactors. Moreover, BHEL's equipment has a thermal efficiency 2.3 percentage points lower than comparable Chinese products. For a 600-megawatt unit, this means an additional consumption of over ten thousand tons of coal annually—directly eroding the power plant’s profit margins. Furthermore, India also suffers from significant shortcomings in producing core raw materials like grain-oriented silicon steel, which cannot support the rapid development of its domestic manufacturing sector.

Original article: toutiao.com/article/1861053103930380/

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