New Delhi: Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Thursday made a score of imported items, including mobiles, costlier as a new policy to incentivise the domestic industry in sectors like electronic, footwear, furniture, auto components and food processing.
In the Union Budget presented in the Lok Sabha, he proposed customs duty hike from 15% to 20% on mobiles, some of their parts and accessories and certain TV parts from 7.5%/10% to 15%. “This will promote creation of more jobs in the country,” he said amid cheers from the ruling benches. Even the board of the mobile”s charger or adapter that was duty free will now attract 10% duty while duty on smart watches and wearable devices is up from 10% to 20%.
The imported items that will be costlier as this step for incentives to the domestic industry are: Orange fruit juice from 30 to 35%, other fruit juices and vegetable juices 30 to 50%, Cranberry juices 10% to 50%, miscellaneous food preparations (except soya protein) 30% to 50%, perfumes, beauty or make-up or hair preparations, preparations for oral or dental hygiene and pre-shave, shaving or after-shave preparations, personal deodorants, bath preparations and other perfumery, cosmetic or toilet preparations 10% to 20%.
The custom duty hike is from 7.5% to 15% in case of accessories of motor vehicles and motor cycles, from 10% to 15% in case of CKD import of motor vehicles, cars or motor cycles as also truck and bus radial tyres, and 20% to 25% CBU imports of motor vehicles. The duty in silk fabrics as also footwears is hiked from 10% to 20% and 10% to 15% in case of parts of footwear.
The duty is doubled on cut and polished coloured gemstones and diamonds from 2.5% to 5% while the hike on imitation jewellery is from 15% to 20%. In case of furnitures, including seats and parts of seats, mattress support, articles of bedding and furnishing and light fitting will attract the custom duty of 20% instead of present 10%.
A host of other items on which the customs duty is double from 10% to 20% are: wrist watches, clocks, alarm clocks, toys like tricycles, scooters, pedal cars, dolls, doll carriages, puzzles of all kind, video game consoles, parlour games, automatic bowling alley equipment, festive, carnival or other entertainment articles, articles and equipment for sports or outdoor gams, swimming pools, fishing rods and nets, and shooting galleries and other fairground amusements.
The miscellaneous items on which the duty is doubled to 20% include sunglasses, kites, date, sealing or numbering stamps, cigarette lighters, scent sprays and toilet sprays while it is raised from 10% to 25% in case of candles and the like.
The customs duty has been also hiked on the edible vegetable oils. It is 30% instead of 12.5% on the crude oils like groundnut oil, olive oil, cottonseed oil, safflower seed oil, saffola oil, coconut oil, palm oil, linseed oil, castor oil and sesame oil while it is 35% instead of 20% in case of these as refined oils.
In case of refractory items like bricks, blocks, tiles and similar ceramic construction goods, the duty is increased from 5% to 7.5% while it is reduced from 10% to 7.5% in case of stone articles of magnesite, dolomite or chromite, bricks, blocks, tiles and other ceramic goods of silceouss fossil meals or similar siliceous earths.
Jaitley also brought in 10% social welfare surcharge on the aggregate duties of customs on the imported goods and another 3% surcharge on a host of goods. He was quite frank that he was making a calibrated departure from the policy in the last two decades to reduce the customs duty. He, of course, did reduce some of the customs duties in the name of ease of doing business in the cross-border trade and to meet commitments under the trade facilitation agreement.
