Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications
Saturday, Oct 04, 2003
Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications Saturday, Oct 04, 2003 |
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Excise and Customs Agri-Biz & Commodities - Sugar Centre levies additional cess on sugar Our Bureau
New Delhi , Oct. 3 THE Centre has clamped an additional cess of Rs 6 per quintal on sugar, taking the total duty incidence on the commodity to Rs 91 per quintal. Currently, the total duty on sugar sold in the open market is a flat Rs 85 per quintal, which comprises a basic central excise duty of Rs 34, an additional excise duty of Rs 37 (in lieu of sales tax) and a sugar development fund (SDF) cess of Rs 14. In the case of levy sugar sold through fair price shops, the total duty works out to Rs 52 per quintal, inclusive of a basic duty of Rs 17, an additional duty of Rs 21 and an SDF cess of Rs 14. The Union Cabinet, which met here on Friday, decided to increase the SDF cess on both levy as well as free sale sugar from Rs 14 to Rs 20 per quintal, taking the total duty incidence on the former to Rs 58 and on the latter to Rs 91 per quintal. Briefing newspersons here, the Parliamentary Affairs Minister, Ms Sushma Swaraj, justified the hike in SDF cess on grounds of financing a cane payment package to growers in `non-SAP' States. The Cabinet, in fact, today approved a package enabling mills in Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and other States, whose Governments do not `advice' their own cane prices in addition to the Centre's statutory minimum price (SMP), to clear their arrears to farmers. Under the package, the State Governments will be allowed to make additional borrowings from the market and use the money to liquidate the cane payment arrears through the mills. "In case the interest on these borrowings exceed 4 per cent, the additional cost would be reimbursed from the SDF. This would place the non-SAP States on par with the SAP (State Advised Price) States (Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Uttaranchal and Punjab), who have already been given a Rs 678-crore package in the form of a concessional one-time loan at 4 per cent," Ms Swaraj said.
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