The Indian government on Thursday, 30 July, imposed restrictions on imports of colour television sets.
Why Was Such a Decision Taken?
This announcement was made by the Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) in an attempt to promote local manufacturing and also to cut “inbound shipments of non-essential items” from countries like China. This includes TV sets of screen size ranging from up to 36 cm to over 105 cm, including the Liquid crystal display (LCD) television sets.
The DGFT notification read: “Import policy of colour television.....is amended from free to restricted”.
So What Does This Mean?
When an item is put under the restricted category of imports, it means that whoever wants to import that commodity will first have to seek a license from the commerce ministry’s DGFT. The main exporters of TV sets are China, Vietnam, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Korea, Indonesia, Thailand, and Germany, news agency PTI reported. In 2019-2020, India imported colour TV worth $781 million of which $428 million was from Vietnam and and $293 million was from China respectively.
Will This Impact Domestic Brands?
Many domestic brands have welcomed this move as most of them have their manufacturing and assembling units in India which means they will be able to provide the people high quality assembled television sets.
“Sony has been investing heavily to shift local manufacturing of televisions to India since 2015. Currently, we are successfully manufacturing 99% of BRAVIA televisions in India and we are quite satisfied with the production quality, which is at par with global standards and well accepted by our Indian consumers. We have faith in the Government and this step has built the right momentum for India’s journey to become self-reliant,” Satish Padmanabhan, Head of Sales at Sony India told The Quint.
This would further boost the ‘Make in India’ initiative by the Modi government.
Sports goods, toys and plastic goods are some other non-essential that are likely to face import restrictions.
(With inputs from PTI)
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