Indirect Taxes

Rationalisation of Customs Tariff Structure for Industrial Goods

Removal of tariff rates, application of appropriate cess to broadly maintain effective duty incidence, levy not more than one cess or surcharge, and exemption of Social Welfare Surcharge on multiple tariff lines.

Medicine Import

• Relief on import of Drugs/Medicines:36 lifesaving drugs are exempt from Basic Customs Duty (BCD), and 6 others are subject to a 5% concessional duty, benefiting those with cancer, rare, and chronic diseases.
• Patient Assistance Programmes: 37 more medicines along with 13 new patient assistance programmes will get exemption from Basic Customs Duty.

Support to Domestic Manufacturing and Value addition

• Critical Minerals: Exemption of BCD on cobalt powder, scrap of lithium-ion battery, Lead, Zinc, etc.
• Textiles: To promote domestic production of technical textile proposed two more types of shuttle-less looms to the list of fully exempted textile machinery.
• Electronic Goods: To rectify inverted duty structure, increased the BCD on Interactive Flat Panel Display (IFPD), reduce the BCD to on Open Cell and other components.
  • Lithium Ion Battery: Additional exempted capital goods for EV battery manufacturing, and mobile phone battery manufacturing.
• Shipping Sector: Continued the exemption of BCD on raw materials, components, consumables or parts for the manufacturing and breaking of ships another ten years.

Export Promotion

• Handicraft Goods: Proposed to add nine items to the list of duty-free inputs.
• Leather sector: Full exemption of BCD on Wet Blue leather to facilitate imports for domestic value addition and employment.
• Marine products: To enhance India's competitiveness in the global seafood market, proposed to reduce BCD from 30% to 5% on Frozen Fish Paste (Surimi).
• Domestic MROs for Railway Goods: To promote development of domestic MROs for railway goods extended the time limit for export of foreign origin goods that were imported for repairs, from 6 months to one year.

Trade facilitation

• Time limit for Provisional Assessment: Presently, the Customs Act, 1962 does not provide any time limit to finalize Provisional Assessments. Hence proposed to fix a time-limit of two years, extendable by a year.
• Voluntary Compliance: A new provision allows importers/exporters to voluntarily declare facts and pay duty with interest, without penalty, incentivizing compliance; excluding cases already under audit or investigation.
• Extended Time for End Use: To aid industry planning, extended the end-use time limit for imported inputs from six months to one year and reducing filing requirements to quarterly statements.