India’s Ban on Laptop & Computer Import in 2023: A detailed timeline of events from the perspective of an average consumer
Last Thursday, I was working late night as I didn’t want to get up early on Friday to finish some pending work. I wrapped up everything swiftly and before logging off, I opened Twitter and read that the Government of India has put a ban on import of electronic items like laptops, PCs, microcomputers and mainframes.
Obviously, that didn’t seem to make much sense to me because to the best of my knowledge, we’re not building such items in India, at least not at a scale that could meet the demands. Only a handful of OEMs are currently assembling PCs and laptops in India, and the list is not that big as I knew that only Acer and Dell were doing it in India, while the rest like ASUS and Lenovo were still manufacturing such items mostly in China and getting them imported to India to sell them.
Here’s the notification from Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT), under the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, led by Piyush Goyal and it mentioned, ‘Import of Laptops, Tablets, All-in-one Personal Computers, and Ultra small form factor Computers, Servers under HSN 8471 is “Restricted” with immediate effect.’ which was kind of a big deal for consumers like me, because although there are some exceptions, they don’t apply to any average consumer so I was expecting that the prices of laptops may shoot up within a few days. But well, I was tired and went to sleep.
Friday morning, I woke up a bit late, finished some pending work, and switch back to my personal laptop from the official one. By then, people were surprised by this move from the Government of India and a full-on outrage was going on. On Twitter #LaptopBan was trending, and many people expressed their disappointment and anger around this order.
While many people called it a step backward, supporters of the Government argued that this move will force OEMs to establish their manufacturing and assembly facilities in India, which was kind of a valid point, but such things would take time and till then, people will have less access to the latest products and even if they do, they will have to shell out huge amounts of money. Within the span of a day, sellers on e-commerce platforms like Amazon India and Flipkart were seen increasing the prices of existing products.
So, it was hard for an average consumer like me to digest this argument that such bans will encourage OEMs. The media also claimed that the Government is taking this step due to security reasons and to boost local manufacturing.
Now, I have no idea how the Government plans to make OEMs start local manufacturing because we’ve seen earlier as well that the so-called Indian brands, like Jio, also got its JioBook 11 manufactured by Hunan Greatwall Computer Systems Co., Ltd. in Hunan, China. So, it could be one of the worst affected products as well, as this article explains the whole JioBook manufacturing and import related details.
By evening, reports like this were coming in that Apple, Samsung and HP are stopping new imports of laptops and tablets to India. Now, note that all these happened within a day or so, between Thursday and Friday. By then, many people had outraged against it, while some were seen defending the move, and laptop prices were already up by a considerable or huge margin in some cases. Some people also suggested some sort of connection between the launch of JioBook 11 and this move from the Government of India.
So, all these things happened within a span of two days, between Thursday and Friday, i.e. August 3rd and 4th, and by then, an amendment to that earlier order imposing the restriction was published by Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) which stated that the order imposing the restrictions will now be effective from November 1st, 2023, and all consignments affected by this move will be cleared till October 31st, without a license for restricted imports.
What do you all think about this confusion regarding the timeline of implementation of this restriction? Maybe let me know or educate me a bit about how this will help India and if this is helpful why such steps were not taken for brand like BBK which sells smartphones under its brands, Oppo, OnePlus, Realme, Vivo and iQOO? Meanwhile, I will be looking at the developments around this and see whether the manufacturers really start to move their facilities in India within the deadline of October 31 to ensure they can meet the demands of this huge market in India.
