Centre's FTA norms led Samsung to resume local television production

Samsung, which holds more than 27% of the local TV market, has been importing finished sets from Vietnam, where it has a large production-cum-assembly base

A recent tweak in the import duty waiver clause has prompted Samsung to change its stand on local production of television sets. With the government raising heat on bulk importers recently, country’s largest TV maker Samsung had to step back from its earlier decision and resume production in India by end-2020 — nearly two years after it had exited.

In spite of the government’s efforts to reduce the country’s imports bill for TV sets, bringing Samsung back on board was not easy. But a change in import duty waiver clause by the government, from mid-September, managed to deliver results that multiple