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India to up local output to check Chinese 'invasion'

Last Updated 10 August 2020, 02:01 IST

A list of over 7,500 goods, including sindhur, bindi, lip brush and even pen nibs, which are landing from China at 200-300% more than the domestic cost, has put the government on its toes even as it struggles to provide jobs and cut costs.

The government is in the process of identifying items which could be manufactured domestically by micro and small enterprises albeit with the government’s handholding.

The move will cut costs, reduce imports and provide jobs at the bottom-most rung of the ladder, an official source told DH.

“We have an endless list of things, whose cost at the factory gate if manufactured domestically, could be less than 10 paise a unit but are just being imported because in the past no one really cared for making them back home. In the past three to four years, we have pruned many of them, most of the imports have also been reduced in value terms,” said the source.

“Can you imagine nearly 8,000 goods landing in your country are from a single source? Most of these you can produce yourself at a lower cost,” he said.

The commerce ministry’s list of goods imported from China includes many daily-use articles like match splints, slate pencils, chilly seeds, needles, nib points for fountain pens and refills for ball-point pens and many more such items, which can easily be categorised as unjustified and unnecessary imports.

“Why should India import Ganesha idols and even my humble ‘bindi’ from China, when these products can be made locally by Indian firms?” Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had said recently, justifying the imposition of a ban on such imports from the communist country for which raw material is easily available in India.

Noted economists and Niti Aayog’s first vice-chairman Arvind Panagariya, who quit the Narendra Modi government in the middle of his tenure, however, last week warned the Union government against bringing back the import licence regime, saying it violated WTO norms and would hurt India’s exports in the long run.

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(Published 09 August 2020, 18:56 IST)

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