Samsung has given Make in India a boost with its plans for local production of TV sets. However, there are some hurdles. Samsung needs permission to import TV sets to ensure that business continuity is not impacted in the festive season.
On July 30, the government had put television sets on the restricted list of imports for the first time in 20 years. This was part of its strategy to discourage imports from China and boost local manufacturing. As such, companies need licences to import TV sets, but the government so far has not issued any such permit.
Samsung, in a letter to the IT and Electronics Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, said import impediments were against the ethos of Ease of Doing Business. It said imports held at Customs were impacting business. “As we are setting up the TV manufacturing plant by December 2020, we request for smooth operations and business continuity,” the electronics giant said. Moreover, the company has also notified the Prime Minister’s Office and Directorate General of Foreign Trade.
TV is one of the larger segments under the entire domain of Appliance and Consumer Electronics. It accounts for 1.7 crore units and has an estimated worth of about Rs 25,000 crore. Televisions worth Rs 600-700 crore are imported into India every month. According to official data, $781 million worth of TVs were imported in 2019-20, of which $428 million was from Vietnam and $293 million was from China.
In 2019, the South Korean electronics giant had shifted its entire TV manufacturing from Chennai to Vietnam. Samsung imports its portfolio of TVs from Vietnam under the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between the two countries. Now, its to resume production in India as it recently entered into an agreement with Dixion Technologies which produces 55-inch or smaller TVs and account for 85 per cent of teh Indian TV market as a whole. Sources attributed this to conducive environment for manufacturing after the government rolled back custom duty imposed on display panels to zero.
