According to reports from The Wall Street Journal, the Indian government is proposing to make sweeping curbs on the import of technology products such as tablets, laptops, printers, set-top boxes, Wi-Fi devices and telephone handsets among many other products.
These regulations would create an expensive ’Buy India’ mandate, according to the newspaper, and would mean that those companies selling products in India would have to manufacture a significant proportion of their technology products within India itself. It’s been suggested that this would have to be in place by April of this year.
The regulations would also mean that Indian technology companies would have to source a large percentage of parts locally to meet a further requirement that value was also being added to the products in India.
Indian officials said that they need to implement these regulations in order to put a stop the widening trade gap, act as a security measure to protect the country against any kind of cyber attack and boost local manufacturing.
While the rules are currently in draft form, lobbyists and industry officials in the US are opposing their introduction.
Speaking to The Wall Street Journal, Ron Somers, president of the US-India Business Council, a lobby group for US firms in India said: “India is the largest free-market democracy in the world. To mandate local manufacturing is antithetical to the very concept of a free marketplace.”
Representatives in India for Cisco, IBM, Nokia-Siemens and Ericsson all declined to comment.
