COURTESY HT SEPT 21

Local TV sets to become dearer from October 1
Rajeev Jayaswal

letters@hindustantimes.com

New Delhi : The government has decided to impose a 5% import duty on open cell, a key component for television manufacturing, from October 1 to nudge the industry to produce it locally, which could see up to ₹250 increase in prices of TV sets, officials said.

The government had imposed a 5% duty on open cell in March, 2018, which was withdrawn on the request of the domestic television manufacturers who wanted some time to develop their own production capacity within India. But most of them took it easy, two finance ministry officials said requesting anonymity.

The deadline for duty free import of open cell will end on September 30.

“This exemption was given a year ago to the industry as it had sought time to build domestic capacity for open cell. The move was elemental to the Phased Manufacturing Plan (PMP) of television and its components to bring the television industry out of the crutch-walking from mere assembling of imported parts of television,” one of the officials said.