After rolling back a slew of tax measures, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee on Tuesday made minor changes in excise and customs duties to benefit commercial auto players, among others. Mukherjee announced a cut in the excise duty on chassis for commercial vehicles by a percentage point. Excise duty concessions were also given to ball point pen ink, polyester fibre and yarns made of waste, along with certain footwear parts.
Certain goods required for solar power, a few raw materials for solar cells and wood pulp were exempted from customs duty. There were other minor alterations as well.
‘I may not be here’
“I may not be here,” he said in the Lok Sabha on Tuesday, triggering smiles from members, as speculation rages about his becoming the next President. “I don't mean that,” he sought to clarify quickly in an apparent reference to moving to Rashtrapati Bhawan about which BJP leader Yashwant Sinha spoke yesterday.
