India Tunnel Boring Machines and China Export Curbs, Explained

On Tuesday, 3 November 2026, Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal told a student forum in Delhi that if China does not supply tunnel-boring machines (TBMs), India will develop them.

The line lands before a Chinese licensing rule takes effect on 18 November. The Hindu BusinessLine and BusinessToday reported that China's Ministry of Commerce announced export controls on 19 October 2026, with the framework starting on 18 November 2026. BusinessToday described it as a licence exporters must obtain, and called the step an export licensing requirement rather than an outright ban on all shipments.

This explainer stays with four reports: Business Standard (Krity Ambey, updated 10:55 pm IST on 3 November, first published 2:27 pm IST), The Hindu BusinessLine (T E Raja Simhan, Chennai, updated 6:18 pm on 21 October), BusinessToday (updated 4:36 pm IST on 3 November), and The Indian Express (Ravi Dutta Mishra, updated 9:07 am IST on 21 October). Where they count different things, the figures stay with the paper that published them.

The 60-second version

• What Goyal said: If China does not give tunnel-boring machines, India will develop them. He was speaking at the Young Leaders Discourse Forum, Kirori Mal College, Delhi. Business Standard carried that sentence. BusinessToday carried a longer version from the same forum.
• What China announced: Export controls on 19 October, licensing from 18 November 2026. The Hindu BusinessLine said the list covers TBMs and specialised equipment, including walking excavators and high-altitude wet shotcrete machines, citing dual-use and national security. BusinessToday said exporters need licences under the dual-use rules, and described that as licensing rather than an outright ban on all shipments.
• What Vaishnaw has said India makes: All 8-meter diameter TBMs are being manufactured in India. 15-meter machines have started. A plant is in Tamil Nadu. Machines exceeding 16 meters will follow very soon, from design and manufacturing through maintenance. Business Standard attributed this to an X post last month.
• The import bill: Machines worth $486 million in 2025-26. Half of them came from China, which Business Standard called India's top source, ahead of Germany and the United States.
• The machines already at work: BusinessLine, citing industry sources, said nearly half the TBMs in India are German-made, and that 70 to 100 are working at any time, a majority of them German brands. That is a fleet description, not the import invoice.
• The German cushion: Herrenknecht's Chennai facility has operated since 2007, BusinessLine reported. A developer told Business Standard it has been a cushion. BusinessLine also said equipment made in China can still be caught even when the brand is European.
• A pipeline estimate, not a tender: One PSU engineer told BusinessLine the 2025-35 pipeline could need about 340 TBMs and about Rs 1.02 lakh crore.

What a tunnel-boring machine is, in this story

Business Standard described a TBM as equipment that excavates a circular or near-circular tunnel through ground that can range from hard rock to soft, water-saturated soil, with limited disruption at the surface.

The Indian Express said machines of this class, which it described as 3,000-tonne, are in use on Indian construction, and that they are a safer way to dig than conventional blasting. It singled out the Mumbai-Ahmedabad high-speed corridor, where the tunnel passes through a densely populated stretch. That project detail is later in this piece, and it is the Express's account.

Business Standard added that demand has risen with metro projects and with infrastructure in the mountains, and that many of these machines are deployed in border regions where the government is building strategic works. That is the paper's framing of why the kit is treated as more than a contractor's tool.

What China announced

The Hindu BusinessLine's 21 October report, by T E Raja Simhan in Chennai, said China's Ministry of Commerce announced the controls on 19 October. The licensing framework takes effect on 18 November. The restrictions cover TBMs and specialised equipment, including walking excavators and high-altitude wet shotcrete machines. The paper said Beijing cited potential dual-use applications and national security.

BusinessToday's 3 November account matches the dates. It said that under the rules, exporters will be required to obtain licences for specified tunnelling equipment under China's export control framework for dual-use items. It then drew the distinction that matters for anyone reading the word "curbs" as a shutdown: the measures introduce export licensing requirements rather than an outright ban on all tunnel boring machine shipments.

The Indian Express, updated at 9:07 am IST on 21 October, reported that China's commerce ministry said export operators would need to apply for a licence under the export control law and the regulations on dual-use items, effective 18 November. The Express said a fresh licensing mechanism gives the Chinese government more leverage in trade talks, and that the impact on India would depend on how China uses such restrictions.

Business Standard, in its 3 November story, put the same date in a shorter sentence: "Starting November 18, trading partners will need to get the licence to import the equipment." That is the paper's summary. The licence BusinessToday and The Indian Express describe is one that Chinese exporters must seek. This explainer does not treat the Business Standard sentence as a separate Indian import ban.

BusinessLine added two points on scale and on who gets caught. It said Chinese companies command nearly 70 percent of the global TBM market, so the curbs could affect metro expansions, high-speed rail and tunnels in strategically sensitive border regions. And it said equipment manufactured in China could also face restrictions even when supplied under European brands.

What Piyush Goyal said

Goyal was delivering the keynote at the "Young Leaders Discourse Forum", organised by Kirori Mal College in Delhi. Business Standard quoted him this way:

"If they (China) don't give tunnel-boring machines, we will develop them in India."

BusinessToday reported the same appearance and a longer run of sentences. In that account he said India's approach was different from countries that might make agreements in exchange for rare earths, that India did not wish to spoil relations with anyone, and that relations with China remain good and can improve if there are no other hurdles. The line BusinessToday then quoted: "But if they refuse to provide tunnel boring machines, we will develop them ourselves in India. India is not one to bow down."

The two papers do not print an identical transcript. The short sentence above is Business Standard's. The "bow down" sentence is BusinessToday's. Both place the remarks at that forum on Tuesday.

On the relationship itself, Business Standard quoted a separate line from the same event: "Our relations with China remain good and if there aren't any new hurdles, they can improve further." The paper set that against the post-2020 chill. It said New Delhi and Beijing are trying to improve relations after they soured following the incident in the Galwan Valley in 2020. It also reported that in September, Prime Minister Narendra Modi met President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the Brics summit in New Delhi, where the two discussed the structural trade imbalance, supply chains and market access, and that this was Xi's first visit to India in seven years. Those are scene-setting facts in the Business Standard story. They are not a claim that the TBM licence has already been waived.

Rare earths, from the same speech

Goyal tied the TBM remark to an earlier Chinese curb. Business Standard quoted him: "When they put curbs on rare earths, I called a meeting with our startups and encouraged them to manufacture motors without rare earths." And: "Some startups have started producing motors without rare earths of equal quality and equal efficiency."

BusinessToday's version of that passage includes a line that India "did not go around begging" when rare earths were restricted, and that he asked startups why they could not build motors without those materials. Both outlets report the claim that some Indian startups are producing such motors at equal quality and efficiency. Neither names the startups.

He also repeated, in the Business Standard account, that India has never opened its dairy market in a trade deal and will not allow genetically modified products in. That is a separate point from the same interaction. It is not a TBM policy.

What India already says it manufactures

Business Standard said Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, in an X post last month, said India was moving toward self-reliance in these machines. The paper quoted him:

"All 8-meter diameter tunnel boring machines are being manufactured in India. Moreover, even 15-meter tunnel boring machines have now started being made in India. There is a TBM plant in Tamil Nadu. And very soon, TBMs with a diameter exceeding 16 meters will also be manufactured in India. This means India is becoming self-reliant (Aatmanirbhar) in TBMs, right from design and manufacturing to maintenance."

BusinessToday, writing on 3 November, reported the remarks as coming days after China's announcement, and included a line that is not in the Business Standard extract: earlier, all tunnel boring machines had to be imported. The rest of BusinessToday's quotation tracks the same claims: 8-metre machines being made in India, 15-metre machines started, a Tamil Nadu plant, and diameters above 16 metres very soon. This explainer uses the Business Standard block as the quoted post, and treats the "all of them had to be imported" sentence as BusinessToday's report of the same remarks.

The Hindu BusinessLine reported a separate public-sector step. State-owned BEML has invited expressions of interest for design consultancy to develop indigenous TBMs from 6 m to 16.5 m in diameter. Sources told the paper that earlier a 650-tonne locally assembled machine was deployed in Tamil Nadu for the Kolkata Metro project. The 650-tonne deployment is attributed to sources. The BEML invitation is stated in the paper's own account. Vaishnaw's "exceeding 16 meters" line and BEML's 6 m to 16.5 m consultancy are related ambitions. These reports do not say they are the same order.

BusinessLine also said industry experts have called for supportive taxation, more research spending, and a proposed National Tunnelling Centre. That is a wish list in the story, not a scheme that has been notified in these four reports.

Two different pictures of dependence

It is easy to mash the China share and the Germany share into one ranking. The reports are counting different things.

What is being counted	Figure in the report	Who it is attributed to
Imports in 2025-26	Machines worth $486 million. Half of them came from China. China is the top source, then Germany and the United States.	Business Standard
Machines in India	Nearly half of TBMs are German-made.	Industry sources, via The Hindu BusinessLine
Machines at work	70 to 100 TBMs working at any time on underground and metro projects, a majority of them German brands.	The Hindu BusinessLine
One engineer's market list	Herrenknecht 40 to 45 percent, then Robbins (US), Terratec (Malaysia), CRCHI and STEC (China), Komatsu (Japan).	Amrendra Srivastav, via The Hindu BusinessLine

Business Standard did not publish a unit count next to the $486 million, and it did not split the "half" into a separate dollar figure. This explainer leaves the wording as the paper printed it.

The fleet lines are BusinessLine's, from industry sources and from the paper's account of machines at work. They can sit beside a year in which China was the largest import source. A German machine bought in an earlier year is still in the ground. A Chinese machine invoiced in 2025-26 is in the trade number. Neither paper, in these stories, prints a single official table that reconciles the two.

The 340-machine estimate

Amrendra Srivastav, whom BusinessLine describes as a senior engineer in a leading public sector unit, estimates that the infrastructure pipeline for 2025-35 could require around 340 TBMs, involving about Rs 1.02 lakh crore. The verbs in the paper are "estimates" and "could require". This is not reported as a Cabinet sanction or a published government target.

The market-share order above is his, as BusinessLine recorded it. He gave a percentage for Herrenknecht. The paper did not print percentages for Robbins, Terratec, CRCHI, STEC or Komatsu.

He also put a price band on a machine: $10 million to $100 million, which the paper rendered as Rs 80 crore to Rs 800 crore, depending on size and specification. For the Delhi Metro, the Mumbai Metro and the Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train, he said, several machines are required, and the foreign-exchange outflow runs to billions of rupees. That outflow figure is his, in BusinessLine's words.

The German cushion, and where it stops

Business Standard said two manufacturing facilities are servicing part of India's requirement. A metro-rail professional told the paper that two of the world's leading manufacturers have plants in Chennai and Bengaluru, each able to make up to 10 machines a year, with 65 percent component indigenisation. The paper called the two facilities recently created. One of them, it said, is German Herrenknecht AG, supplying from Chennai. A developer said these have provided a cushion against Chinese curbs.

The Hindu BusinessLine dates the Herrenknecht Chennai facility to 2007, which is not a recent start. The two descriptions are both in the record: Business Standard's "recently created" line, via its account of the Chennai and Bengaluru plants, and BusinessLine's 2007 date for Herrenknecht in Chennai. This piece does not collapse them into one founding year.

BusinessLine's account of that Chennai works is the fullest of the four:

• The facility has operated since 2007.
• The paper said the German Consulate General in Chennai had highlighted it in a social media post. BusinessLine did not reproduce the post.
• Herrenknecht machines are deployed in New Delhi, Ahmedabad, Mumbai, Kolkata, Bengaluru and Chennai.
• Ten of its TBMs are drilling tunnels for the Chennai Metro expansion.
• Its machines have helped construct more than 200 km of tunnels in India.

An official at Chennai Metro Rail Ltd (CMRL), quoted by BusinessLine, said the organisation does not depend heavily on China:

"We don't heavily depend on China for TBMs. We use German, American and Chinese machines. We have local facilities for German machines. Chinese machines are a bit cheaper. German machines are more reliable. Many contractors prefer German over Chinese for productivity or maintenance."

The official is unnamed. "A bit cheaper" and "more reliable" are that official's comparison, as the paper carried it.

The cushion has a documented limit. BusinessLine said machines made in China could face the new restrictions even under European brands. The Indian Express reported that India had already faced delays importing TBMs since 2024, and that it received machines in March this year after tensions eased somewhat. The Express story was updated on 21 October 2026, so "this year" in that sentence is 2026.

The Express described a 2024 video of Goyal with Germany's then vice chancellor Robert Habeck, during a metro ride in Delhi. In that account, Goyal flagged delayed shipments and said India was to receive TBMs from Herrenknecht that the company was making in China, and that the sale of those machines to India was being blocked. The Express did not present that passage as a verbatim quote. It then quoted what Herrenknecht itself told the paper in 2024: for several months the company had seen "extraordinary circumstances" in customs clearance for machines to be delivered from China to India, and those circumstances were hindering delivery.

So the Chennai plant, the developer told Business Standard, is a cushion. The China-built Herrenknecht machines, The Indian Express reported, were the ones caught in 2024. BusinessLine's warning about European brands made in China is the bridge between those two facts.

Business Standard also quoted the contractors who have to live with the gap. Some leading engineering, procurement and construction firms said they are more insulated from a China crisis than they would have been in the past. A contractor said alternative suppliers exist in Germany, Japan and other countries, and that replacing specialised machines is not straightforward.

The bullet train, as The Indian Express reported it

The Indian Express said these machines are playing a crucial role in several Indian projects, particularly the country's first bullet train: the 508 km Mumbai-Ahmedabad High-Speed Rail Corridor. The project includes a 7 km undersea rail tunnel.

The paper said TBMs, used in Europe, Canada, the United States and Australia, give a much safer excavation than blasting. That matters, it wrote, because the high-speed rail tunnel passes through a densely populated area.

BusinessLine's engineer, in the same breath as the price band, named the Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train among the projects that need several machines. Business Standard did not, in the 3 November story, give a corridor length or an undersea distance. Those two numbers are the Express's.

What to watch next

1. 18 November 2026, when BusinessLine, BusinessToday and The Indian Express say the licensing framework takes effect. The question the Express posed is how China uses it: a licence that is granted is a different outcome from a licence that is delayed.
2. European-brand machines built in China. BusinessLine said they can fall under the controls. The 2024 Herrenknecht customs trouble, as The Indian Express reported it, is the precedent contractors already know.
3. Machines above 16 metres. Vaishnaw's post, as Business Standard quoted it, said they will be manufactured in India very soon. BusinessLine reported BEML's design-consultancy invitation for indigenous machines from 6 m to 16.5 m. A delivered machine, and a named buyer, would move that claim from a ministerial post to a factory record.
4. Metro and high-speed rail supply. Chennai Metro's 10 Herrenknecht TBMs are already described as drilling. The Mumbai-Ahmedabad corridor, including the 7 km undersea tunnel, is the project The Indian Express put at the centre of the equipment question.
5. Parts, not only new cutters. A contractor told Business Standard that swapping a specialised machine for another supplier is not straightforward. The reports here do not publish a spare-parts schedule. They do say the licence covers more than a single finished TBM: BusinessLine listed walking excavators and high-altitude wet shotcrete machines alongside the borers.
6. The 340-machine figure. It is Amrendra Srivastav's estimate for 2025-35, via BusinessLine, with an investment of about Rs 1.02 lakh crore. It becomes something else only if a ministry or a tender adopts it.
7. Whether the startups Goyal cited are named. Both Business Standard and BusinessToday reported motors without rare earths, at equal quality and efficiency. The companies are not named in either story.

A licence dated 18 November, a minister's line that India will build the machines if China withholds them, and a Chennai factory that has been cutting tunnels since 2007: that is the position these four reports describe. How many cutters and components clear the new paperwork is the part still ahead of the record.

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This explainer draws on Business Standard (Krity Ambey, with inputs from Dhruvaksh Saha; first published 3 November 2026, 2:27 pm IST, updated 10:55 pm IST), "Will develop tunnel boring machines if China puts curbs: Piyush Goyal"; The Hindu BusinessLine (T E Raja Simhan, Chennai, updated 21 October 2026, 6:18 pm), "Germany's local manufacturing base cushions India against China's TBM export curbs"; BusinessToday (Business Today Desk, updated 3 November 2026, 4:36 pm IST); and The Indian Express (Ravi Dutta Mishra, New Delhi, updated 21 October 2026, 9:07 am IST), on China's TBM restrictions and the Mumbai-Ahmedabad high-speed rail project. Goyal's and Vaishnaw's words are quoted as those papers printed them, and the two papers do not use identical wording. The $486 million import figure, the half from China, and the source ranking are Business Standard's. The 70 percent global share, the German-made fleet, the 70 to 100 machines at work, the CMRL official's comments, the Herrenknecht Chennai history, and the BEML invitation are BusinessLine's. The 340 machines, the Rs 1.02 lakh crore, the market-share order and the $10 million to $100 million band are Amrendra Srivastav's estimates as BusinessLine reported them. The 508 km corridor and the 7 km undersea tunnel are The Indian Express's. The 650-tonne machine is attributed to sources in BusinessLine. This piece does not treat the 18 November step as an outright ban, and it does not treat the pipeline estimate as a notified government target.