| Lower jet fuel duty mulled |
| RUN UP TO BUDGET 2006 |
| Monica Gupta & Bipin Chandran / New Delhi February 27, 2006 |
| Finance Minister P Chidambaram is likely to cut jet fuel tariff in order to give a boost to the booming aviation sector. Government officials said P Chidambaram, during his interaction with the empowered committee of state finance ministers on value-added tax earlier this month, had indicated that he was in favour of lowering duty on aviation turbine fuel. Officials said Chidambaram had indicated that state governments should consider lowering the duty by bringing it under the VAT (at present, ATF attracts a duty of 20 per cent). Another option being actively considered by Chidambaram is to declare ATF as a good of special importance under Section 14 of the Central Sales Tax Act. This will help reduce duty on ATF to 4 per cent. For this, the civil aviation ministry has appealed to the Prime Minister |
