Slowdown at ports over slow pace of customs examining Chinese cargo

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, June 26

The apparel industry has joined the importers of electronic goods to express their concern over the slow pace of clearing consignments from China at the Indian ports. The automotive industry, the third biggest importer from China, though, said the hold up of shipments at ports had not impacted it so far.

The pile-up of consignments in warehouses as customs authorities have been inspecting each shipment from China for at least a week has led to tailback in the ports of Chinese mainland, Hong Kong and Macao.

The apparel industry, in a big way, depends on “trims” from China, and the bottleneck has led to exports getting impacted as well, according to the Apparel Export Promotion Council (AEPC).

The Federation of Indian Export Organisations (FIEO) has called for a calibrated action that also targets exports of raw materials from India to China.

“Over the past few days, we have been witnessing a severe lag in customs clearance for shipments originating from China across all ports in India. This has led to uncontrollable queuing, congestion and delays of shipments in our clearance ports across the country,” the DHL wrote to its clients.

The situation has turned so dire that even the US-India Strategic Partnership Forum, which is spearheading a move to get about 200 American companies to shift their manufacturing base from China to India, has said this was not the right time for New Delhi to enter into a trade war.

However, no official explanation has been forthcoming except for some unconfirmed reports quoting government sources. Customs officials anonymously claimed that such inspections were “usual”.

It was not possible under the global trade practices for the Centre to issue formal instructions in this regard, the sources added.

At the same time, they pointed out that traders dealing with the Chinese goods were not blameless as they had been caught indulging in mis-declarations, non-declaration, under-invoicing and anything “one can imagine or not imagine”.

The Central Government is already examining ways to limit India’s import dependence on China through the Atma Nirbhar Bharat scheme’s provision of making government purchases of less than Rs 200 crore only from Indian small and medium manufacturers, who have been asked to explicitly state the country of origin.

Preference is also being given to companies with indigenous content of over 50 per cent.