Import management system to monitor laptops, computer import from November 1

India will not impose restrictions on imports of laptops and computers but will only monitor their inbound shipments, commerce secretary Sunil Barthwal said Friday.

“On laptops, we are of the view that there are no restrictions as such. We are only saying that somebody who is importing these laptops, have to be under close watch, so that we can look at these imports,” he said.

Barthwal said: “It is basically monitoring, which we are doing. It has nothing to do with restrictions as such.”


The Director General of Foreign Trade Santosh Kumar Sarangi said there will be an import management system, which will come into place from November 1.

Subsequent to the last notification, there have been a number of stakeholder consultations done by Meity and DGFT.

“The stakeholders had raised a number of concerns and one of that being ..having an end to end online system which will ensure that issuance is fairly streamlined to an extent where issuance is automated and flows online to DoR ..that is a work in progress and it would be put in place before 30 of this month,” he said.

The government in August imposed import restrictions on laptops, computers (including tablet computers), micro computers, large or mainframe computers, and certain data processing machines with a view to boost domestic manufacturing and cut imports from countries like China.

The licensing conditions on imports were put on the grounds of security and to spur domestic manufacturing of these products.

India already has an import monitoring system for certain products like steel, coal and paper.