The Finance Ministry has implemented most of the proposals that were announced in the foreign trade policy (FTP) 2009-14 last month. The revenue department’s measures on the customs duty side covered proposals relating to various export promotion schemes including the export promotion capital goods (EPCG), Focus Product, Focus Market and the Served From India schemes. Besides promoting import of capital goods at zero per cent duty for certain sectors under EPCG, the FTP had for technological up-gradation of exports permitted status holders to import capital goods duty free.
Additional duty credit scrips equivalent to 1 per cent of Free on Board (FOB) value of export is to be issued to status holders under this facility.
As the proposals unveiled in the foreign trade policy had prior okay of the Finance Ministry, they are now being implemented without any glitches, official sources said. However, the revenue department is yet to implement those proposals with implications on the excise duty front. They are likely to be implemented once the Law Ministry gives its nod. The duty concessions announced in the foreign trade policy 2009-14 will cost the exchequer an additional Rs 2,200 crore this fiscal (in the remaining months), the CBEC (Central Board of Excise and Customs) Chairman, Mr V. Sridhar, had recently said.
The FTP announcement last month, has come at a “challenging time”, when the world is facing an economic slowdown. The World Trade Organisation (WTO) has estimated that the global trade this year is likely to decline by 9 per cent in volume terms. The IMF has projected a decline of over 11 per cent. The country’s merchandise exports had suffered a decline in the last 11 months, largely due to contraction in demand in the traditional export markets.
Source : Business Line