No proposal to include toy industry under PLI scheme, says govt

The government has no proposal to include the toy industry under the performance-linked incentive scheme, Minister of State for Commerce and Industry Som Prakash said in reply to a question on whether it was planning to include the domestic toy industry under the special incentive scheme, news agencies reported on Thursday. 

The Government had launched Production Linked Incentive (PLI) schemes in 14 sectors which will make Indian manufacturers globally competitive, attract investments, enhance exports, integrate India into the global supply chain and reduce dependency on imports.

The government has been providing all-around support to the domestic toy industry to make them more competitive.

“Some of the measures include promoting Made in India toys; designing of toys based on Indian values, culture, and history; using toys as a learning resource; organizing hackathons and grand challenges for toy designing and manufacturing; monitoring the quality of toys; restricting imports of sub-standard and unsafe toys and promoting indigenous toy clusters,” the minister said in his reply on Wednesday.

To promote domestic toy manufacturing, basic customs duty on toys was increased from 20 per cent to 60 per cent in early 2020.

Notably, exports of toys from India increased by 61.38 per cent in the last three years. It rose from USD 202 million in 2018-19 to USD 326 million in 2021-22.

The import of toys, however, reduced by 70 per cent during the same period from USD 371 million USD 110 million, the minister said.

The Indian toy industry was earlier facing stiff competition from Chinese toys. However, in the past few years, imports from China declined substantially.

Imports of toys and other gaming and sports items from China declined from USD 491.67 million to USD 252.1 million in the past 5 years, data showed.