India Tyre Quality Control: 70 Sizes Excluded from Exemption List

New Delhi, Feb 6 (PTI) As many as 70 types and sizes of tyres that are manufactured by more than one company will come under the mandatory quality control norms from March next year, an official said.

The official said as the norms would kick in from March 2025 both the industry and the associations will get a fair amount of time to exchange a list of products and complete the process of validation and testing (durability, endurance).

The review of the list of tyres is a regular exercise to be carried out by IMC (inter-ministerial committee) for making suitable recommendations with regard to the exclusion/inclusion of the pneumatic tyres' sizes from the list of tyres not manufactured domestically.

The DPIIT (Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade) is in the process of notifying an updated list of 960 tyres' sizes/types by making necessary modifications to the previous list of 600 tyres.

"Out of these 960 tyres, 70 tyres' sizes/types which are now manufactured by more than one manufacturer shall be excluded from the exemption list of QCO (quality control order), 2009 with effective from March 1, 2025," the official added.

The list of the remaining 890 tyres' sizes/types which are not being domestically manufactured and are imported from overseas shall be added to the exemption list of QCO.

In order to curb the imports of sub-standard products into India, prevention of unfair trade practices and enhance the quality of domestically manufactured products, for the protection of human, animal or plant health, and safety of the environment, QCO was notified on November 19, 2009. It came into effect on May 13, 2011.

Certain amendments to restrict and monitor tyres imports in the country proposed by DPIIT vis-a-vis the import policy of tyres, were notified by the DGFT (directorate general of foreign trade) on June 12 2020 which moved certain new pneumatic tyres from free to restricted category (licensing regime).

Consequently, the importers have to apply for import licences for those tyres.

Under the present mechanism, an IMC recommends the exclusion/inclusion of the pneumatic tyres' sizes from the list of such tyres not manufactured domestically.

Primarily, only those tyres' sizes which are produced by more than one manufacturer shall be treated as domestically manufactured.

Based on decision of IMC, the DPIIT on January 25, 2023, issued a list of 600 tyres sizes/types that were not manufactured domestically and were imported by the Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) for selling in replacement market through their authorized dealers.

"Recently, the list has been further reviewed by the IMC after due consultation with stakeholders and now, DPIIT is in process of notifying an updated list of 960 tyres' sizes/types by making necessary modifications in the previous updated list of 600 tyres' sizes/types," the official said.