The shortage of testing facilities offered by the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) could hamper the business momentum of the Indian personal computer (PC) industry, with the government directing all firms to obtain its certification before shipping their products to customers.

The BIS has only five labs in country and the entire process of certification could potentially take about 5-6 months, which would mean unnecessary delay in introducing products launched globally.

The government has asked all PC manufacturers to get BIS certification for their products from April this year. The Manufacturers Association for Information Technology (MAIT) is worried. Its executive director Anwar Shirpurwala told FE, ?Every country has its laws and we need to accept that but the question is whether it is feasible as there are not enough labs in the country.?

The PC industry is extremely global in nature with a very tight supply-chain mechanism and many brands source their products from a limited number of suppliers before shipping them across the world. Any adverse remark by BIS on a particular brand could affect many players as a group as they would generally have a common supplier.

S Rajendran, chief marketing officer, Acer India felt that the government should provide more clarity on the matter. Presently, it is not clear which parts of the PC should be certified given that many components sourced globally get various certifications from the point of their origin.

It is understood that some of the PC manufactures are contemplating termination of their shipments to India till some of these vexing issues are cleared. Added to this, the government’s directive on placing cyber security brochures in all the product boxes could become a logistical nightmare for the PC firms.

Industry executives felt they could always provide a soft copy of these guidelines or place it as a sticker on these boxes, while adding that the extra brochure cost could been passed onto the customer.

However, these policies are yet to be implemented and a MAIT official said they are in constant touch with government officials. For the industry, the overall India PC shipments for CY 2012 stood at 11 million units resulting in an year-on-year growth of 3.5% over CY 2011, according to IDC.

Despite a drag on overall IT spending, the growth in India PC market was driven by special projects like ELCOT of Tamil Nadu government.