The Government has exempted 38 more agriculture items from the ambit of the Commodity Transaction Tax (CTT), which was imposed in July 2013, in a bid to boost commodities trading. The Finance Ministry in its notification issued on February 10 has amended the CTT rules to add 38 more agriculture items in the list of exempted products.
The farm items that have been added in the list includes rice or paddy, rice bran, tur, tur dal, urad, urad dal, mung, mung dal, masur, gram dal, gram husk, onion, bajra, jowar, ginger, sesamum, small millets, groundnut, methi, ragi, betelnuts, cinnamon, nutmeg, clove, linseed, and sunflower seed, among other commodities.
According to the data compiled by the Forward Markets Commission (FMC), the turnover of the commodity exchanges has fallen by over 42% and stood at Rs 51.26 lakh crore during April-January period of this fiscal. At present, four national and six regional level commodity exchanges operate in the country.