Govt restricts imports of laptop, PCs, tablets

The government on Thursday restricted import of laptops, tablets, all-in-one personal computers and ultra small form factor computers and servers. These electronics can be imported only against a valid license meant for restricted imports.

India imported $10.08 billion worth if these products in FY23 of which $5.3 billion came from China, $1.7 billion from Singapore and $896 million from Hong Kong.

In a notification, the Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) said that exemption from import licencing is provided up to 20 items per consignment for R&D, Testing, Benchmarking and Evaluation, Repair and return, Product Development purposes, re-import of such items repaired abroad, and where the item is an essential part of a capital good.


“Import of laptops, tablets, all-in-one personal computers, and ultra small form factor computers, servers...is 'Restricted' with immediate effect,” DGFT said.

However, it clarified that it has not restricted imports under baggage rules for the said items.

“The objective of this move is to push local manufacturing. However, our ecosystem isn’t ready yet for assembly of this magnitude,” said Navkendar Singh, Associate Vice President, IDC India.

As per Singh, vendors ship in close to 2 million notebooks every quarter with around 75% out of this imported. Also, the almost entire volume of premium notebooks are imported.

“Also the timing isn’t the best as the PC market has been struggling since last 2-3 quarters and this will further dampen the market sentiment,” he said.

The government said the import licensing requirement is exempted for purchase of a single unit of laptop, tablet, all-in-one PCs or ultra small form factor computer, including in cases an unit is bought from online sites. However, such imports will attract taxes as applicable.