Customs duty on LCD TVs slashed to 5 percent

September 25th, 2009 NEW DELHI - India's excise tax collection in August rose 22.7 percent from the previous month, while customs duty collection improved meagrely from minus 30 percent in July to minus 28 percent last month, a senior government official said here Friday. "The industry is showing signs of revival.

September 21st, 2009 KOLKATA - The Rs.1,600-crore Indian electric fan industry, hit badly by the economic slowdown last year, does not see any respite in the coming six to nine months, an industry player said here Monday. "Our domestic sales as well as exports suffered last year.

July 20th, 2009 NEW DELHI - The country's leading direct-to-home (DTH) service provider DishTV Monday hiked the price of set-top boxes (STB) by Rs.100 each, passing on a rise in customs duty to customers. Now the STBs will cost Rs.1,590.

July 6th, 2009 NEW DELHI - With the exports dipping for the second consecutive month in May, the allocation for the market development scheme for exporters has been increased 148 percent to Rs.124 crore, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee said while presenting the union budget for 2009-10 in the Lok Sabha Monday. The market development scheme provides support to exporters in developing new markets.

July 6th, 2009 NEW DELHI - Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee Monday cut customs duty on a key wind turbine component and on bio-diesel while presenting his 2009-10 budget proposals, hoping the move would please environmentalists. But an international NGO said he had done nothing to change the direction of India towards a greener economy.

July 2nd, 2009 NEW DELHI - Indian exports could continue to remain subdued this year amid a dismal outlook for the trade sector and world trade volume output set to decline by 11 percent, the Economic Survey for 2008-09 released by the government Thursday said. Citing recent International Monetary Fund (IMF) projections of a negative growth of 1.3 percent in world output and falling import demand from major trading partners, the survey said: "India's export of goods and services is expected to be impacted." India's merchandise exports registered a decline for the second straight month in May with the value of shipments 29.2 percent lower at $11.01 billion compared to the $15.55 billion earned the same month last year.

June 28th, 2009 Jordan, Canada sign free trade agreementAMMAN, Jordan — Canada has signed a free trade agreement with Jordan, its first with an Arab country. The agreement, signed Sunday in Jordan's capital, Amman, will give the Mideast country preferential trade conditions, including full exemption from customs duties for Jordanian goods.

June 28th, 2009 NEW DELHI - A leading industry body has called for increasing customs duty on steel from 5 percent to 10 percent as consumption of local steel by domestic users was falling. According to the Federation of Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Ficci), imported steel accounted for over 11 percent share of consumption, as compared to 6 percent a few years ago.

June 19th, 2009 NEW DELHI - The government has extended the anti-dumping duty on Vitamin-C imported from China for another five years, the Central Board Of Excise and Customs (CBEC) said Friday in a notification. The duty, at the rate of $3.99 per kilogram of the vitamin, was imposed in October 2003 for five years.

June 9th, 2009 MUMBAI - Sheetal Mafatlal, a leading business woman belonging to the well known Mafatlal family who was arrested for trying to allegedly smuggle in gold and diamond jewellery, was Tuesday granted bail by a Mumbai court. Sheetal was Monday remanded to judicial custody by a metropolitan magistrate and spent the night in the Byculla Jail.

June 8th, 2009 MUMBAI - Socialite Sheetal Mafatlal, president of Mafatlal Luxury, was remanded to judicial custody till June 12 by a court here Monday, a day after she was arrested for carrying diamond and gold jewellery whose true value she allegedly didn't disclose to customs officials to evade duty of around Rs.3 million. Mafatlal was detained at the Chhatrapati Shivaji International airport Saturday and later arrested Sunday under sections of the Indian Customs Act.

June 5th, 2009 POONCH - The weekly cross-border trade between Indian Kashmir and Pakistan- administered Kashmir came to a standstill after the authorities did not let the traders to carry items which did not originate in Jammu and Kashmir. To check evasion of customs duty during cross Line of Control (LoC) trade, the Central Government in a fresh condition has made it mandatory for traders that goods to be traded by them with Pakistan-administered Kashmir should be grown or manufactured in Jammu and Kashmir.

June 3rd, 2009 NEW DELHI - Indian IT hardware industry has called for parity in the countervailing duty (CVD) and service tax, levied on IT hardware products, in a pre-budget memorandum submitted to Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee. It is strongly recommended that the rate of service tax be aligned to that of the excise duty/CVD to avoid structural anomalies, the Manufacturers' Association for Information Technology (MAIT) said in a statement Wednesday.

June 1st, 2009 NEW DELHI - India's budget 2009-10 should be an "investment budget" to help the the country tide over the economic slowdown, said the Confederation of Indian Industry's (CII) pre-budget recommendations, presented to the finance ministry Monday. "There has been a steep decline in the public consumption and investment, so this budget has to be an investment budget," CII president Venu Srinivasan told reporters here after releasing the industry lobby's key recommendations.

February 26th, 2009 NEW DELHI - A day after the central government announced 2-percent excise duty cut, some of India's commercial vehicle manufacturers Wednesday slashed prices across their trucks and bus line-ups to pass on the benefit to consumers. 'We are passing on the full benefits of the excise duty reduction,' a spokesman for Ashok Leyland said, adding that this would 'bring prices down on average slightly more than Rs.16,000'.