An industry body has asked the government to reinstate Countervailing Duty (CVD) exemptions, which have been withdrawn on tunnel boring machine and some road construction equipments, to enable contractors procure their requirements from abroad.
"Considering that government's serious initiative to accelerate road construction in mass scale throughout India, it is essential to restore the exemption withdrawn on the equipment required for road construction including TBM, which were available earlier," Construction Federation of India (CFI) said.
The Federation said it has submitted a memorandum to the Revenue Secretary and the CBEC (Central Board of Excise and Customs) Chairman demanding urgent steps to provide "some relief" to the infrastructure construction sector.
It said the sector is "facing severe financial crisis due to huge debts for reasons beyond their control" coupled with delay in recovery of payments/claims from clients, litigations, multiplying interest on bank loans.
Federation's other demands included continuation of service tax exemption to services by way of construction, erection, commissioning, or installation of original work pertaining to civil structure, educational, airports, port and metro or mono railway project.
It also complained that the current tax policies are "framed keeping in view of manufacturing sector".
Another demand of the Federation is enhancing the time period for re-import of Indian goods sent abroad for construction of project work up to 10 years (presently 3/5 years) or till completion of the project work whichever is earlier.
