Days after release of Union Budget 2018, expressing optimism over the government’s decision to increase customs duty on certain items, Finance Secretary Hasmukh Adhia has said that the government will receive about Rs 7,000 crore revenue, on account of import duty hike in 45 items.
Adhia, however, clarified that import duty hike is not for collection of revenue because the import of these items are not too much and the country is not getting too much of revenue, but at the most, the country will get something like Rs 6,000-7,000 crore due to extra import duty. He also noted that the government has taken this decision to give a push to the MSMEs for domestic manufacturing, as this industry is in a position to make many of these items.
Besides, Finance Secretary mentioned about a phased manufacturing programme in electronic manufacture industry and for which increasingly they will be putting more duty on the final product, then on second level of spare part and third level of spare part. The idea is to encourage assemblers to make more and more components in India.
In the Budget 2018, Finance minister Arun Jaitley proposed an increase in customs duty on a range of products, from fruit juice to mobile phones. He proposed to increase customs duty on mobile phones from 15% to 20%, on some of their parts and accessories to 15% and on certain parts of TVs to 15%. This measure will also promote creation of more jobs in the country.