(MENAFN- KNN India)
Licensing Not Needed For Laptop Imports, Says MoS IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar
New Delhi, Sept 27 (KNN) The Minister of state for Electronics and IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar on Tuesday said that the import of laptops won't need any licensing, according to a report by TOI.
Speaking at the TOI's Tech Summit, Chandrasekhar said "there never will be a licensing Regime under PM Modi. He has never believed in it. He doesn't believe in it now, and he certainly will not believe in it going forward.”
The minister added that an import management system will be put in place to replace the proposed regime that was to kick in from November.
Earlier, the Companies such as Apple, Samsung and other global players had said that a sudden decision of imposing a licensing regime, as the government pushed for higher domestic manufacturing, would disrupt supplies and lead to price rise.
Countries, such as, the US had also raised concerns over the issue, which came as part of the government's attempts to get more domestic manufacturing under the production linked incentive (PLI) scheme, where allocations were raised from Rs 7,350 crore earlier to Rs 17,000 crore after a tepid response from global and local manufacturers.
Chandrasekhar suggested that the DGFT notification was not communicated properly.
"There is no such thing as licensing. And it never was there. But unfortunately, the way it came out after it was notified was that we are trying to create a licensing regime,
it came out in a language that was certainly not consistent with our intent. It became licensing instead of what it really was - an import management system,” he added.
The minister said that the decision was "not taken in haste" and added that the IT Hardware PLI scheme was designed after taking inputs from the industry.
The government will soon announce the new import management system, which will allow electronics companies to have "certain amounts of import", but "based on their domestic manufacturing and exports.
"No licence, just a very automatic process. And built into that is a design incentive that says you have more and more incentives to manufacture locally. If you continue to import more and more from geographies that are not trusted, the government can put additional conditions and scrutiny. Essentially, the message for companies is that we want a trusted supply chain,” the minister informed.
KNN Bureau
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