New Delhi, Jul 9: Revealing a news that may break millions of Indians' LCD TV dreams, LG said that it will not be cutting the costs of the flat screens and will continue the price hike that it introduced recently.

Presenting the Union Budget 2009-10, the Finance Minister, Pranab Mukherjee said that the customs duty on the LCD panels will be slashed in order to encourage indigenous production of the screens inside the country. This created an air of joy among the commoners as the media announced that the LCD TVs and monitors will cost much lesser.

However, South Korea-based LG Electronics that hiked the prices by an average of 5 per cent, said that it is "not in a position to roll it back immediately."

Since the cost of a module was increased by an average of 30 per cent, the company has no choice but to charge more for the TVs at the retail level. Modules form almost 70 per cent of the cost of an LCD TV, therefore the drop of 5 per cent means just a reduction 2 per cent on the complete product.

The only good news that the company could give as of now was that the drop in custom duty may arrest further price hikes.

OneIndia News