Centre does not plan to restrict low-cost foreign smartphone sales
Premium- The minister's comments followed reports that the country was planning to restrict sales of cheap Chinese smartphones to revive the prospects of Indian-build competitors
Union Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology, Rajeev Chandrasekhar on Monday said the IT ministry has no proposal to restrict sales of foreign smartphone brands that cost below ₹12,000.
Chandrasekhar's comments came after reports suggested the Capital could impose restrictions to promote domestic players.
When asked if there was any plan to limit the sale of devices below ₹12,000 to Indian brands, Chandrasekhar told reporters: "There is no such proposal in our ministry."
"There is a space for Indian brands ... it is not to the exclusion of foreign suppliers or foreign brands," he said.
Speaking at the launch of a report titled "Globalise to Localise: Exporting at Scale and Deepening the Ecosystem are Vital to Higher Domestic Value Addition", he said, “India’s electronics exports crossed $16 bn in FY 2021-22."
Electronics as a sector has jumped to the sixth largest export from India this year, he noted.
Chandrasekhar further said that mobile phones constitute the single largest component of electronics exports from India. “They are expected to contribute nearly 50 percent of the total electronics exports by next year," he added.
New Delhi has subjected Chinese firms operating in the country, such as Xiaomi and rivals Oppo and Vivo, to close scrutiny of their finances, which has led to tax demands and money laundering allegations.
India amped up pressure on Chinese firms in the summer of 2020 after more than a dozen Indian soldiers died following a clash between the two nuclear-armed neighbours on a disputed Himalayan border.
The government has since banned more than 300 apps, including Tencent Holdings’s WeChat and ByteDance’s TikTok, as relations between the two countries fray.
Homegrown firms including Lava and MicroMax comprised just under half of India’s smartphone sales before new entrants from the neighbouring country disrupted the market with cheap and feature-rich devices.
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