In a late night notification, the Directorate Normal of Overseas Commerce (DGFT) mentioned import consignments of laptops, pc and tablets shall be cleared with out licence till October 31, 2023. “Liberal transitional preparations are supplied for import of laptops, tablets, all-in-one PCs, extremely small type issue, computer systems and servers falling below HSN 8471,” DGFT mentioned.
The federal government stepped into injury management mode as high corporations akin to Samsung, Apple and others have been compelled to cease shipments into the nation as they’d have wanted a licence from Friday to maintain the provision chain going. The federal government had given a discover of simply over 12 hours earlier than setting up the brand new regime, which is dealing with flak. There was discomfort in sections of the business in addition to on social media that the federal government was attempting to drive in a licensing regime via the “ad-hoc resolution”, which might have abruptly compelled the businesses to alter their sourcing plans for India.
Minister of state Rajeev Chandrasekhar denied any such intentions and insisted the step had been taken to have safe sourcing. “This isn’t in any respect about licence raj. It’s about regulating imports to make sure trusted and verifiable techniques and guaranteeing the Indian tech ecosystem makes use of trusted and verified techniques which can be imported/domestically manufactured trusted techniques/merchandise,” he mentioned via his Twitter deal with.
A senior official within the IT ministry mentioned whereas the federal government desires to encourage high pc and pill corporations to put money into India, the brand new regime won’t prohibit them from participating in imports via licences.
“The federal government will relatively prolong help throughout the transition, and items in transit won’t be impacted,” the official mentioned, including that DGFT will situation licences “inside minutes”. “DGFT will situation clarification that there isn’t any restriction on the variety of merchandise, quantum of imports, or variety of licences per entity,” the official mentioned.
The ministry has already reached out to the businesses relating to the extension. “This may even give time to corporations to use for licences.” The official additionally mentioned DGFT will make clear modalities for rejection of utility for licence each time such a choice shall be taken.
Inside naming China straight, the official mentioned in view of accelerating situations of cyber assaults, India must take “preventive measures” to make sure that shipments from a specific geography are countered.
