Government increases custom duty to 20% on imported phones

In Union Budget 2018, as the government has increased the basic custom duty to 20%, the prices of imported smartphones such as Apple will increase by upto 4%. As per the industry experts, the prices may stabilize over the time as local production is expected to increase to 90% as most players assemble phones locally.

This step is likely to be in line with boosting manufacturing in India as Apple and Google imports their phones from China. About 75-80% of the phones sold in India are made locally, as most players operating here prefer to manufacture locally to take advantage of the duty differential versus imports.

The duty increase would be the third instance in the last 12 months. In February 2017, the government imposed a 10% import duty which it increased to 15% in December, and now to 20%.

Apart from smartphones, the government has increased import duty on charger, adapters, battery packs, microphone, wired headsets, keypad, antenna, sidekeys, USB cables, from 7.5% or 10% to 15%. The government also imposed 10% import duty on printed circuit board (PCBs) of chargers.