Union Budget 2026: What the Customs Duty Changes Mean If You Import from China

Union Budget 2026-27 reshaped a chunk of India's customs tariff schedule, with most changes taking effect from midnight on February 2, 2026. Most of it is routine tariff housekeeping - but a few changes are directly relevant if you're importing from China.

Cheaper for personal and small imports

• Basic customs duty on personal-use imports (the bracket used for anything non-commercial, including product samples) was cut from 20% to 10%, effective February 2, 2026
• A Social Welfare Surcharge on top of that kicks in from April 1, 2026, so the real effective rate settles around 11% - still roughly 9 percentage points cheaper than before
• Worth knowing if you order product samples or small personal-use batches from a Chinese supplier before committing to a bulk order

A few categories got more expensive

• Customs duty on video game console parts roughly quadrupled, from 5% to 20%
• A handful of other narrow categories, including live animals and some chemical inputs, also saw increases in the same reshuffle
• This isn't a broad anti-China tariff - it's a small set of specific categories, not a blanket hike on Chinese goods generally

Critical minerals and battery inputs get cheaper

• Over 50 critical mineral inputs - lithium compounds, cobalt, rare earths, and related battery materials - move to nil basic customs duty from May 1, 2026, through a "tariffisation" that locks concessional rates permanently into the tariff schedule instead of renewing them as temporary exemptions
• Solar-sector treatment is mixed: the silicon wafer exemption lapses April 1, while new exemptions were added for POE encapsulants and copper rods used in solar ribbon

What actually matters if you're sourcing from China right now

• If you deal in samples or personal-use quantities, your landed cost on that category just dropped
• If you import in a category that saw a hike - video game hardware components is the clearest example - price that in before your next order
• Everything else - GST, IGST, and the existing anti-dumping duties on categories like steel and chemicals - is unchanged; this budget didn't touch the core China-specific duty structure, just a narrower set of categories on both sides