New Delhi is now seeking measures to prevent trade partners from re-routing Chinese goods to India with little value. The official said that India is now planning to increase the quality standard of imports, impose quality restrictions and initiate more frequent checks at ports for goods coming from many Asian countries. It will mainly target imports of electronic components and base metals for mobile phones, laptops, furniture, leather goods, toys, rubber, textiles, air conditioners, etc. India’s trade Ministry had issued a notice last week to restrict to inbound shipments of TVs by requiring importers to get a special license. These are expected to hurt Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia- members of the Association of Southeast Asian nations (ASEAL).
The main reason behind this is free trade among them(FTA. The heavy trade flow from South Korea is also a major worry of India. One of the officials said that raising duties has a limited impact, now we have to raise quality standards and should make sure that goods in FTA routes have routes in those countries. This will definitely make the customs more vigilant than ever before. For an email seeking comment, India’s Trade Ministry will not replay immediately. The officials said that the government is also discussing raising the value addition requirement for products imported from those countries from the current level of 20 percent to 40 percent.
India had an uneasy relationship with China and a Himalayan border dispute escalated into the clash from decades. Twenty Indian soldiers were killed in that clash. China is also one of India’s biggest trading partner, in the fiscal year ending March 2019 trade worth $87 billion and a trade benefit of $53.57 billion in China’s favor, and it is the widest that India had with any other country. They had not received any type of official communication on the issues of raising non-tariff barriers or re-routing of goods, says the Thailand and Malaysian Authorities. The Trade Ministry of Thailand said in a statement to Reuters that the ASEAN treaty and it should be reviewed to make it more liberal in terms of tariff liberalization and rules of origin and to have simple customs and the verification procedures. While the Indian officials said that the government was inclined to stick to those FTAs that it seems mutually beneficial. The George Paul CEO of the Manufacturers Association for Information Technology said that ASEAN agreements India had got in many respects the bad end of the stick, particularly the field of electronics where a number of products are being routed through the ASEAN economies to India.
