Seoul, Aug 17: The South Korean electronic giant, Samsung, will soon expand its operations in India by opening more assembling plants for colour televisions and refrigerators and launching semi-conductors in the country.

The department of telecommunications (DoT) has given a green signal to the company to launch semi-conductors in India, ``But we do not know exactly how fast it will take off,'' says Samsung's global operations (Indian desk) manager Kim Sung Soo. According to him, the company is also venturing into telecommunication products and inksprinters. Samsung last month launched hard disk drives in Goa while its cd-rom business was already picking up.A 50-50 joint venture with Larsen and Tourbo for providing telecom facilities is also on the anvil.

Kim says the company, whose promotion and advertising focus till now has been only on northern India, is now planning to venture into western and southern regions of the country and an assembling plant will soon come up some where near Mumbai. Samsung's only assembling plant (for colour tvs) is in Noida in the neighbourhood of Delhi. An assembling factory for refrigerators in the industrial city is also in the pipeline.

Kim claims Samsung had already occupied 8 per cent share of the market for colour televisions in India. He says more assembling factories are the need of the hour in India where transportation costs are very high. Samsung also plans to start exporting colour television sets from India to other countries in the region. ''This will not be immediate, but definitely sometime in the near future,'' he said adding that if components are bought from Indian companies and assembling too done in India, products will be cheaper than importing components from Korea. He also regrets that bureaucratic red tape and lack of infrastructure were deterring foreign companies interested in investing in India.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.