India Tightens Border Control To Discourage Movement Of Chinese Companies

Last updated on February 14th, 2023 at 12:53 pm

India has already got a new feather in its cap, as the Apple company has decided to shift production of its phones to Chennai from China. But the news gets even better as India now moves ahead to create a safety net where it is now restricting companies from nations that share a land bounder with India to freely deal in goods and services unless they register with the industry department.

This is essentially to stop any trade development and transactions from any Chinese entities, post the unpleasantness faced at the LAC between India and China.

Earlier in the June, New Delhi had made it mandatory for all suppliers to mention the country of origin on the government’s e-Marketplace while bidding for tenders.  Further, all ecommerce companies had also been asked to mention the country of origin in their products, for which most companies said that they need more time to implement such a change.

China has been India’s biggest source of import. Over the last few months, as China has been unnecessarily bullying India into a decision, PM Narendra Modi seems to have found just the right opportunity to get India to move away of dependency on China and explore more lucrative options of self reliance.

Read: Delhi Airport mandates 7-day quarantine for international passengers

India is now trying to take away key sector developmental projects from Chinese participation. But this is not deterring Beijing from coming up with a conclusive answer to the situation on the Line of Actual Control (LAC). China is still not taken any steps to diplomatically solve the problem at hand.  While the Centre has allowed relaxation of rules when it comes to procurement of medical supplies for containment of Covid-19 until December 31, the quality of items from China is already under world criticism over its illegal and forceful use of manpower from the ethic Uighur Muslim community. The new rules set down will apply to all new tenders. These include even those that have crossed the first stage of evaluation. Such tenders would stand cancelled.  Contractors would not be allowed to even sub-contract to the unregistered entities from nations sharing a land border with India. All the new norms will be applicable to state-run banks and financial institutions, state-run companies and public private partnership projects receiving financial support from the government.