Officials in India’s ministry of finance and its counterparts in other ministries have commenced discussions on the reduction of import duties on a host of commodities including steel, aluminum, copper and polymers, ahead of the submission of the National Budget 2022-23 before the Indian parliament in February, government sources said on Tuesday, December 28.
According to the sources, there is a “lot of common ground which has been covered” on the need to offer lower import duties to micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) as relief from surging commodity prices to bring down the cost of manufacturing and enable industrial units to recover from the impact of the pandemic.
The sources said that import duties on certain critical steel inputs like nickel for example could also be reduced to zero.
The Federation of Indian Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (FISME) in a memorandum to the finance ministry has sought the complete scrapping of all import duties on steel, aluminum and polymers and the suspension of additional customs duties on these categories to rein in domestic prices of inputs.
Currently, the basic import duty is 7.5 percent for steel, while it is 10 percent for aluminum, five percent for copper and 10 percent on polymers, plus 18 percent integrated goods service tax (GST).