Different Companies Reaction on the recent decline in the customs duty

According to the latest announcement, that the Indian government has halved the import duty imposed on a key component of the TV panel called ‘open cell’ to 5% in order to give some relief, especially to the domestic TV manufacturers and as soon as this announcement came into existence different companies start giving their own thought and view on this; some of them are below:

Mr. Avneet Singh Marwah, Director and CEO of Super Plastronics Pvt. Ltd., a Kodak brand licensee said, “This move that has been planned out, is a big boost for the ‘Make in India’ initiative and will encourage new jobs in the country.

Keeping this in mind, SPPL has decided to add another production line in the country. In my opinion, the duty on CBU should be further increased to foster the development of the manufacturing ecosystem in India. This will help cast down import brands which don’t wish to earn a profit, but want to capture market share at the cost of disrupted pricing. This can snowball into a huge threat for our economy with regards to the trading cycle of our country.

I hope that the Government is taking corrective measures to make sure that import brands are investing and will continue to invest in the Indian market.”

Another big Indian Tv manufacturer Intex also came forward with their own view and commenting on the government’s move to half the basic customs duty on LED TV Panels, Ms. Nidhi Markanday, Director, Intex Technologies, said, “We welcome the move as the government has taken corrective measure on its budget announcement. This will bring back focus on Make in India and correct the anomalies of inverted duty structure that has been hurting domestic manufacturing capacity building and thereby our competitiveness. It will encourage localization, setting up of a components ecosystem in India and will give a boost to plans for local manufacturing. In lieu of the reduction in duty and our focus on consumers, we will re-visit our pricing strategy for the upcoming LED TV models as we aim to offer our products at the best affordable price.”

Intex that has been working on enhancing domestic capacities and has recently begun its own Open Cell Manufacturing or LED Panel manufacturing in Baddi, Himachal Pradesh to improve quality control and produce affordable quality products.

Manish Sharma, CEO and President, Panasonic India and South-Asia

Hike in customs duty to 10% on smartphone components such as camera module and printed circuit board assembly is a progressive initiative undertaken by GoI to foster the local smartphone manufacturing ecosystem. At Panasonic, our endeavour is to ensure that all Panasonic mobile phones are not only assembled in India but also have Indian-manufactured populated PCB’s and we are already in the process of developing manufacturing capabilities in that direction.

While the infrastructure is being setup, we are looking at absorbing maximum costs so that our end customer is not impacted. In addition, we also see an opportunity to support the infrastructure creation for the industry by bringing in sophisticated technologies to the country at a fast pace through our Panasonic Smart Factory Solutions division, a leading manufacturer of special purpose machines including automation needed for PCB’s.