The import duty hike in 45 items announced in the Budget will earn about Rs 7,000 crore revenue to the government and is mainly intended to give a push to the MSMEs for domestic manufacturing, a senior government official said today.
"First of all, it (import duty hike) is not for collection of revenue because the import of these items are not too much and we are not getting too much of revenue. At the most, we will get something like Rs 6,000-7,000 crore on account of extra import duty," Finance Secretary Hasmukh Adhia said.
Explaining the purpose of the duty hike, he said the government wanted to give some comfort to MSME who are in a position to make many of these items.
"We have a phased manufacturing programme in electronic manufacture industry for which increasingly we will be putting more duty on the final product, then on second level of spare part and third level of spare part," he said.
The idea is to encourage assemblers to make more and more components in India.
Central Board of Excise and Customs Chairperson Vanaja Sarna said the duty hike on these items, like LED TV panels, fruit juices, kites and candles, would not be inflationary.
"The usage of it (the items) is by a segment of society who can probably afford it. It's the masses which have to be protected and none of this (duty hikes) is affecting them," Sarna said.
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