As the war in West Asia chokes supply chains and costs skyrocket by 150%, will India’s favourite electronics soon become unaffordable luxuries that one can no longer justify buying?
The Indian printed circuit board (PCB) manufacturers are demanding an immediate 45% to 50% price increase from electronics brands to survive severe supply chain disruptions triggered by the escalating West Asia conflict.
According to a report by The Economic Times, the India Printed Circuit Association (IPCA) warned that localisation efforts within the ₹610 billion ($7.27 billion) domestic component market will freeze entirely unless original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and electronics manufacturing services (EMS) providers absorb these soaring costs.
Moreover, input prices for essential chemical and metal materials have surged by up to 150% over the last six months, pushing several small-scale fabricators to the brink of closure.
The crisis intensified following drone strikes in March 2026 that shut down Saudi Arabia’s Jubail petrochemical complex, which supplies 70% of the world’s high-purity polyphenylene ether (PPE) resin. This severe shortage of PPE resin, a foundational compound used in making copper-clad laminates (CCL), has caused component delivery lead times to stretch from four weeks to an unprecedented 20 weeks.
Furthermore, regional maritime hazards have forced manufacturers to rely on expensive air cargo, driving air freight rates up by 40% to 50% due to rising jet fuel prices.
Compounding the raw material crunch, global suppliers are diverting critical stocks of glass fibre and copper foil away from standard electronics toward high-margin manufacturing for artificial intelligence (AI) servers and 6G telecommunications hardware.
In response, the IPCA is petitioning the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) for urgent import duty exemptions on raw materials. The association is also seeking stricter enforcement of the 30% anti-dumping tariff on finished PCBs arriving from China and Hong Kong, amidst allegations of tariff circumvention as inbound shipments grew 11% to $1.67 billion fiscal year 2026-2027.
