The Indian government is likely to request domestic hardware electronics companies to reduce the overall imports by 5%, including laptops, tablets, all-in-one personal computers, ultra-small form factor computers, and servers, as per a report by ET. 

Its Applicability 
The 5% cut will be applied based on the data received from the Director General of Commercial Intelligence and will likely be implemented from April 1 of next fiscal.  It means companies having an import bill of $ X billion or million in 2024, will be asked to cut their imports by 5% and bring down to just 95% of X. 

“So, there will, however, be no quantitative restrictions. The restrictions or the reductions that have been proposed are based on rough estimates of how much each company tells the government they are likely to import in a fiscal,” an official said.

Objective 
By cutting down on import bills, the government further plans to encourage businesses to make value additions to the economy by means of adding brands made, manufactured, or assembled in India.  This would bring about a statutory mandate to have domestic companies in the supply chain and also enrich the Indian Economy with opportunities and value. 

Concerns about Business Continuity 
“One such idea is that companies lower their imports and simultaneously do value addition so that the country’s overall import dependence goes down. We don’t want business continuity to get hit,” a senior government official told ET.

Strategy 
The government won't restrict itself to just this. It plans to take periodic reviews of the numbers shared by the domestic Indian manufacturers. This would enable a better, comprehensive, and dynamic policy to be implemented over some time that will not only restrict imports and promote domestic usage but also maintain a balance of these aspects with business continuity. 

Industry’s Response
The industry has agreed with the idea of a 5% reduction along with the periodic review of the numbers shared by the domestic Production Companies. 

Status of Policy 
The Policy is currently under stakeholder consultations to receive widespread suggestions from the industry and have a nuanced and growth-oriented policy. 

The opportunity    
In 2024 the bill of imports for such products stood at $8.4 billion against an authorization of $9.5 billion. This figure speaks volumes about the amount of value addition and enrichment this policy would make if implemented timely. 

Besides, most of the goods came from China with the rest from Hong Kong, Southeast Asia, and the US.