India rolls back import restrictions on laptops
Meeting Between Ms. Helena Budliger, State Secretary of SECO, and Sh. Piyush Goyal, Hon'ble Minister of Commerce and Industry
By Sanjay Singh
New Delhi, October 13: The Centre today clarified that it is not going to impose restrictions on laptop imports. The government today rolled back its earlier plan to impose restrictions on laptop imports, months after abruptly announcing such plans which came under criticism from industry and Washington.
India will not impose restrictions on laptop imports, Union Commerce Secretary Sunil Barthwal told a press conference on Friday. He said the government only wants importers to be on close watch. The import licensing regime, announced on August 3, aimed to “ensure trusted hardware and systems” enter India, but it was delayed by three months after objections from industry and criticism by Washington. It would affect companies like Dell, HP, Apple, Samsung and Lenovo.
Currently, the government is holding consultations with the industry and a new order on laptop imports will be announced by the end of October, Directorate General of Foreign Trade, Santosh Kumar Sarangi said.
In early august, the government announced that from November 1, 2023, import permits would be required to ship laptops, tablets, all-in-one personal computers (PCs), ultra-small form factor computers and servers to the country.
The Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) has already developed a portal through which companies or traders can apply for licenses, with the promise of processing it in just two days if all necessary paperwork is submitted. Experts say this will benefit ‘Make in India’ and the Production-Linked Incentive (PLI) Scheme 2.0 for IT Hardware.
In May this yeatr, the Union Cabinet approved PLI 2.0 for IT hardware, which is expected to lead to an increase of Rs 2,740 crore in investments in electronics manufacturing and to total production of around Rs 3.29 lakh crore.
Minister of State for Electronics and IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar had then stated that this was not at all about license raj and it was about regulating imports to ensure trusted and verifiable systems, and ensuring India’s tech ecosystem uses only trusted and verified systems that are imported or domestically manufactured.
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