Post the stand-off with Chinese military at Ladakh, Indians have taken the goal for achieving self-sufficiency or as our PM Mr. Modi says ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’ very seriously. The stand-off has fueled this goal by people calling for ban on usage of Chinese products. The Government in support decided to ban 19 China made apps including TikTok, CamScanner amongst others. After a recent study, the Federation of Indian Micro and Small & Medium Enterprises (FISME) has found that over 660 products including electric lamps, wooden furniture, tricycles, bicycles, etc. can be locally produced instead of importing from China. In doing so, Indians would help cut the trade deficit of $ 50 billion by $10 billion a year.

This analysis was carried out by FISME on the directive order of Ministry of Commerce in order to find out a way to decrease the dependence on import. Decreasing import, producing such products locally will greatly help the economy of the nation and will be a major step towards self-sufficiency. FISME further stated that it is in the process of increasing the duty on such imported products to see if it impacts the sales of these imported products.

FISME further stated that most of the products imported can be manufactured easily in a cost effective manner. The increased import duty was to reduce import and promote local manufacture of these products.

Even though huge companies such JSW Group announced that they would reduce their reliance on products imported from China to zero, the main market for Chinese goods remains to be the MSMEs. The MSME manufacturers support a gradual process of reducing reliance on Chinese products as sudden stoppage of import will affect them as manufacturing those same products will become costlier. Thus the increased duty on imported goods is being implemented as of now and further steps will be gradually taken when the manufactures can produce the same goods at a low rate and are not reliant on imported materials for their manufacture.