State-owned Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI) has extended its deadline for bid submissions for a 1.68GW domestically-made module tender in India.

The tender, which demands the modules use domestically produced cells, for ‘the manufacturing, testing, packing and forwarding, supply and transportation’ of 1.68GW of modules has been extended for two more weeks until Wednesday 7 September.

This is not the first extension SECI has done for the tender which was first expected to be held at the end of July.

Since the implementation of the basic custom duty (BCD) on imports of solar cells and modules in April, India has been pushing hard to increase the domestic manufacturing of solar modules, with Tata Power and REC Solar among the recent companies ramping up their production in the country.

Earlier this week, two Indian state-owned companies signed a memorandum of understanding to establish a gigawatt-scale solar manufacturing site in India, while the country is expected to double its module manufacturing capacity by the end of 2023.