India will not impose the licensing requirement on imports of laptops and computers but will only monitor incoming shipments, a top government official said.
The comments take on significance as the government announced in August that these products, including laptops, tablets and computers, would come under the licensing regime from November 1.
“As far as laptops are concerned, we believe that there are no restrictions per se. We are just saying that anyone importing these laptops should be closely monitored so that we can look into these imports.
“It is basically monitoring, what we do. It has nothing to do with restrictions as such,” Commerce Minister Sunil Barthwal told reporters here.
Director General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) Santosh Kumar Sarangi further said that there will be an import management system that will come into effect from November 1.
The work is underway and hopefully it will be completed before October 30, he said.
While the IT hardware product industry falls under MeitY, the DGFT notifies decisions regarding the import/export of a product.
Following this report, the IT hardware industry has raised concerns.
“It will be more in the nature of an import management system where people get an authorization. It will be a very soft license. It will just be an authorization,” one of the sources said, adding that everything will be online.
A company can apply for the import of certain numbers and then receive a license for the import.
According to the source, the DGFT may also have to clarify its earlier notification (dated August 3) that laid down a licensing regime for the import of these goods.
The decision issued in August had established the licensing requirements with immediate effect, and later amendments were made and a transition period until October 31 was introduced.
The restrictions also apply to microcomputers, large computers 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 safety reasons and to encourage domestic production of these products.
In announcing the licensing rules, the government also said it wants IT products to come from “reliable sources”.
According to a report by think tank Global Trade Research Initiative (GTRI), India is highly dependent on China for daily use and industrial products such as mobile phones, laptops, components, solar cell modules and ICs.
The government has taken several steps to boost domestic production of electronic items, such as rolling out the production-linked incentive scheme and increasing customs duties on the number of electronic components.
Leading electronic 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 goods annually.
The country has 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, against $583.8 million (nearly Rs. 4,860 crore) in 2021-2022.
Similarly, imports of microcomputers/processors in the last fiscal stood at $1.2 million (nearly Rs. 10 crore), against $2.08 million (nearly Rs. 17 crore) in 2021-22.
In May, the government approved the Production Linked Incentive Scheme 2.0 for IT hardware with a budgetary outlay of Rs. 17,000 crore.
The government in February 2021 approved the IT hardware plan, which covers production of laptops, tablets, all-in-one PCs and servers with an outlay of Rs. 7,350 million.
