According to the Union Budget the govt is planning to boost the production of smartphones and TVs in India by incentivizing manufacturers.
Increased cellphone production
In the Union Budget 2023, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced the govt’s intentions to provide some relief to both smartphone and TV makers by reducing customs duty on some key components.
In the budget speech, Sitharaman said that mobile phone production in India has increased to 31 crore units valued at over Rs 2,75,000 crore in the last financial year.
The figure stood at 5.8 crore units valued at about Rs 18,900 crore in 2014-15.
Sitharaman said mobile phone production in India has increased thanks to various initiatives of the Government, including the Phased Manufacturing programme.
Customs duty on imported parts
To further increase production, the govt will reduce customs duty on import of certain parts including the camera components of the phones.
“To further deepen domestic value addition in manufacture of mobile phones, I propose to provide relief in customs duty on import of certain parts and inputs like camera lens and continue the concessional duty on lithium-ion cells for batteries for another year,” Sitharaman said.
The relaxation in customs duty for lithium-ion cells will also be in place for another year.
Coming to manufacturing of TVs the government will reduce basic customs duty on parts of open cells of TV panels to 2.5 percent.
Potential impact
Needless to say the smartphone industry has lots to gain from the new developments.
Praising these initiatives Prabhu Ram, Head – Industry Intelligence Group, CyberMedia Research (CMR), said, “The reduction in customs duty on import of certain component parts for mobile phones is a welcome move, and will provide further impetus to deepen the domestic value addition, and in furthering the development of electronics components ecosystem in India.”
Consumers may benefit too, since the budget addresses the issues of rising component prices and inflation which has resulted in higher retail prices.
Due to inflation the industry was impacted due to lower feature-phone to smartphone migration.
5G in India
But thanks to the provisions in this year’s budget 5G devices can become more affordable for the common man.
Industry experts believe that India is going to witness the fastest rollout of 5G which will be at least three times faster than with 4G.
