Vivo, a Chinese mobile phone company, claims that the Department of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) has stopped the company’s consignment at Delhi airport, and that this action spells the end of the company’s export from India.
according to the ICEA’s letter to the government In an email to the India Cellular and Electronics Association (ICEA), Vivo claims that the DRI has detained a shipment of 26,840 mobile phones and is checking the IMEI numbers of the handsets after opening the seal on their boxes, rendering them unfit for export.
The entire consignment is currently dispersed at the Delhi airport and is no longer fit for export until it is returned to the factory, thoroughly inspected, and repackaged. This being the festive season, this DRI action spells the end of our exports out of India unless the DRI actions at the airport cease immediately and our goods are released,” Vivo wrote in an email to ICEA.
ICEA, in a letter to Alkesh Kumar Sharma, secretary in the Ministry of Electronics and IT (Meity), informed that Vivo Mobile India Private Limited is found to be struggling to export mobile phones out of India due to harassments meted out by a few of the field officers.
We as a nation cannot afford to allow emergence of a scenario, whereby, some officers from the enforcement agencies can derail this process through some unilateral and preposterous actions which can disillusion global companies,
Vivo in the email to ICEA shared that despite stiff resistance from China teams, it has been able to carve out a list of countries including Thailand, Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka and Nepal to service them from India unit.
Despite stiff resistance, we managed to convince the China factories, and finally start export operations from November 2022. It came as an unpleasant surprise to have the DRI have our consignment of 26,840 handsets indicted and a 100 per cent physical inspection carried out on the consignment starting from Nov 26, 2022,” Vivo informed ICEA.
