Companies would require valid Indian license for the Imports of laptop and tablets from November of this year

The Government of India on Thursday announced an immediate restriction on imports of electronic items that fell under the HSN 8741 category such as personal computers, microcomputers, automatic data processing machines, and mainframe computers. Though later a senior official of the Ministry of Electronics and Information and Technology(MeitY) clarified that companies and traders can still import such items without any ban.

Now the Indian Government has made another announcement that clarifies the enactment of the earlier announced restriction. In the notification, the government has said ” Notification No. 23/2023 dated 03.08.2023 shall be effective from 1st November 2023″. Further, it said, “Imports consignments can be cleared till 31.10.2023 without any Licensed for restricted Imports”.

So there won’t be a requirement for a license for the Imports of these aforementioned items in India until October. But ” For clearance of import consignments with effect from 01.11.2023, a valid Licence for Restricted imports is required”.

There were some reports around the restriction that it would delay the launch of tech products in India but a senior official for MeitY mentioned that there won’t be any delay for the licensing procedure and can be attained within 5 minutes by the companies. Companies have already begun to apply for multiple licenses, the MeitY official revealed.