After laptops, cameras, printer import may face ban

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Mission local manufacture: Government exploring import curbs on camera, printers after laptops, tabs

Eager to boost manufacturing in the country, the Centre might target camera, printer, hard disks among other hardware devices to slap import curbs on, The Economic Times has reported after speaking to people aware of the matter. After having applied brakes on imports of “personal computers, laptops, tablets, all-in-one PCs, ‘ultra-small form factor’ computers, and servers” falling under HSN code 8741”, the government is exploring the possibility of bringing other items under such control.

In order to promote manufacturing of the items on Indian soil, the government wants to apply production-linked-incentive scheme to spice up its offer.

The key thought process is, the demand for these items is so huge in India that companies – most of these are multinational corporations – won’t be able to ignore the market and would hastily set up manufacturing units here. Put simply, these production units would result in many jobs and cascading economic benefits in the country, and at a later date, also boost exports from India.

Import of these items was more than $10.08 billion in FY23.

The government is also maintaining a vigil on 250 duty-free products that come under the ambit of Information Technology Agreement-1. These include telecom equipment, scientific instruments and semiconductors. The Centre is also reportedly reviewing other products that are imported in bulk into this country. The list of these items is long and includes among other things antibiotics, urea, lithium-ion accumulators, refined copper, turbo-jets, machines, mechanical appliances, solar cells, aluminium scrap, sunflower seed oil and cashew nuts. In the last financial year, the country’s total merchandise imports stood at $714 billion after registering a rise of 16.5% growth.

The immediate result was a growth in the current account deficit to 2% of GDP from 1.2% in the previous financial year.

Incidentally, the officials of a few MNCs such as Apple, HP, Dell and Acer have met officials ministry of electronics and information technology on August 8 and urged the Centre to extend the deadline required to obtain licenses for imports of tablets and computers. They requested extension of nine to 12 months before the need for licenses to import devices is imposed. The DGFT said licences would be needed from November 1 to import such products though the details of licensing requirements have not yet been spelled out.