The government should announce a scheme giving exporters a rebate on state and local levies to help them tackle the demand slowdown in the world markets, the Federation of Indian Export Organisations(FIEO) said today.
The apex body of exporters said exports were burdened with the incidence of state and local levies which for certain products in certain states may be as high as 5-6 per cent of the Freight-On-Board value.
FIEO President A Sakthivel also said, "the merging of two (Central and State GST) into a comprehensive national GST will take a long time. FTP should therefore, announce a new scheme to rebate State and local levies on an average basis,"
The government has proposed to introduce one Goods and Services Tax (GST) in place of the present dual GST — one for Central taxes and other for State taxes — from April 1, 2010.
FIEO has submitted a list of demand to help exporters deal with the slump in demand to Commerce Minister Anand Sharma for inclusion in the FTP to be announced on August 27.
India's exports are on down slide since October 2008 due to a demand slowdown, particularly in the US and the EU. The country's exports were $168 billion in 2008-09, showing a growth of only 3.4 per cent over the previous fiscal.
Sakthivel said direct and indirect taxes add considerably to the cost of the export products in India and a reduction in the taxes would help exporters to do their pricing competitively. FIEO also wants enhancement of incentives under various promotional schemes like Focus Product Scheme, Focus Market Scheme and Market Linked Product Scheme where the benefit ranges between 1.25 to 5 per cent.
The export benefit under all these schemes should be a minimum of 3.75 per cent and all such schemes may be extended till March, 2012, FIEO has demanded.
Source : Business Standard