India will not impose licenses on imports of laptops and computers, but will only monitor their incoming shipments, a senior government official said.
These remarks take on significance since the government announced in August that these products, including laptops, tablets and computers, would be subject to a licensing regime from November 1.
“As far as laptops are concerned, we feel that there are no restrictions as such. We are just saying that whoever imports these laptops should be closely monitored so that we can examine these imports.
“This is basically surveillance, which is what we are doing. It has nothing to do with restrictions as such,” Commerce Secretary Sunil Barthwal told reporters.
Explaining further, Director General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) Santosh Kumar Sarangi said that there would be an import management system, which would come into place from November 1.
The work is underway and we hope to have it in place before October 30, he said.
While the IT hardware products industry falls under the MeitY, the DGFT notifies decisions regarding the import/export of a product.
Following this notification, the computer hardware industry expressed its concerns.
“It will be more of an import management system where people will be given authorization. It will be a very flexible license. It will simply be an authorization,” one of the sources said, adding that everything would happen in line.
A company will be able to submit an import request for a certain number and will obtain import authorization.
According to the source, the DGFT may also be required to clarify its previous notification (dated August 3) which provided for a licensing regime for the import of these goods.
The order issued in August had put the licensing requirements into effect immediately. Later, changes were made and a transition period was provided until October 31.
The restrictions also apply to microcomputers, mainframe or mainframe computers and certain data processing machines.
India already has an import monitoring system for certain products such as steel, coal and paper.
The licensing conditions for imports were imposed for security reasons and to stimulate domestic manufacturing of these products.
In announcing the licensing rules, the government also said it wanted IT products to come from “trusted sources”.
According to a report by think tank Global Trade Research Initiative (GTRI), India is extremely dependent on China for its daily use and industrial products such as mobile phones, laptops, components, solar cell modules and integrated circuits.
The government has taken several steps to boost domestic manufacturing of electronic items, such as rolling out a production-linked incentive program and increasing customs duties on the number of electronic components.
The major electronics brands sold in the market include HCL, Samsung, Dell, LG Electronics, Acer, Apple, Lenovo and HP.
India imports around $7-8 billion (nearly Rs. 58,300 crore – Rs. 66,630 crore) worth of these products every year.
The country imported personal computers, including laptops, worth $5.33 billion (nearly Rs. 44,390 crore) in 2022-23, up from $7.37 billion (nearly Rs. 61,380 crore) in 2021-22.
Imports of certain data processing machines stood at $553 million (nearly Rs. 4,600 crore) in the last fiscal year, compared to $583.8 million (nearly Rs. 4,860 crore) in 2021 -2022.
Similarly, imports of microcomputers/processors stood at $1.2 million (nearly Rs. 10 crore) in the last fiscal year compared to $2.08 million (nearly Rs. 17 crore) in 2021-22.
In May, the government approved the Production Incentive Scheme 2.0 for IT hardware with a budgetary outlay of Rs. 17 trillion.
The government, in February 2021, approved the program for IT hardware, covering the production of laptops, tablets, all-in-one computers and servers with an outlay of Rs. 4,00,000. 7,350 million.
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