In the industrial goods sector, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced removal of seven tariff rates, application of appropriate cess to broadly maintain effective duty incidence except on a few items and levy not more than one cess or surcharge. “Therefore, I propose to exempt Social Welfare Surcharge on 82 tariff lines that are subject to a cess,” she stated.
As part of its strategy to enable availability of critical minerals for manufacturing in India and promote job creation, the government extended full customs duty exemption to cobalt powder besides waste and scrap of lithium-ion battery and 12 critical minerals such as lead and zinc.
Manish Sharma, Chairman, Panasonic Life Solutions India & SA“ BCD exemption for critical minerals like cobalt will help India overcome disabilities that exist for manufacturing of lithium-ion batteries as compared to other countries. Additionally, exemption of duty on scrap of lithium-ion batteries will fuel the efficiency and capacity utilisation of recycling units that are already in abundance in our country and help enable energy security through energy consumption in our country.”
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To strengthen “Make in India”, the government has decided to increase the BCD on Interactive Flat Panel Display (IFPD) from 10 per cent to 20 per cent. At the same time, it has decided to reduce the BCD to 5 per cent on Open Cell and other components used to make IFPD. “ IFPDs are used in boardrooms and classrooms across India and is a large growing market estimated at Rs 7000 crore. But this sector was facing an inverted duty structure, wherein the components were at higher duty than the finished product. That has now been corrected and will spur manufacturing of IFPDs in India,” said Sunil Vachani, Chairman, Dixon Technologies. Meanwhile, parts of open cells of LED TVs have been exempted from custom duties. Vachani said this is also a step in the direction towards encouraging manufacturing of LCD and LED TV open cell panels in India.
To promote domestic production of technical textile products such as agro-textiles, medical textiles and geotextiles at competitive prices, two types of shuttle-less looms have been added to the list of fully exempted textile machinery. Meanwhile, the basic customs duty on knitted fabrics (covered under nine tariff lines) has been changed to 20 per cent or 115 per kg, whichever is higher.
Meanwhile, frozen fish paste (surimi) will now attract 5 per cent BCD from 30 per cent for manufacture and export of its analogue products. The government is also reducing BCD to 5 per cent on fish hydrolysate for manufacture of fish and shrimp feeds. This is being done to improve India’s competitiveness in the global seafood market
