Feminine and Infant Hygiene Association of India (FIHA), an organisation of small, medium and large-scale industries involved in feminine and infant hygiene, has appealed to the Ministry of Finance to waive the 10 per cent excise duty introduced on sanitary napkins in last Budget.

The excise duty was zero until the last Budget. Barring few States, an additional VAT which varies from State to State, is as high as 12.5 per cent in some cases.

This makes the product expensive, which along with poor awareness, leads to only 12 per cent of the total population of 355 million menstruating women accessing the product in our country.

This is starkly different from other developing countries such as China where the penetration of sanitary napkins has reached levels of 64 per cent or adoption in developed markets such as Japan with 100 per cent penetration levels.

Mr Rajesh Shah, President, FIHA, said: “According to the AC Nielsen data, after the reduction of excise duty to 0 per cent in the year 2000, the size of the sanitary napkins market exploded from 600 million pads to 3,000 million pads in the year 2010 – a 500 per cent increase.

“We are anguished by the Centre's move last year to suddenly take up the excise from 0 to10 per cent.”

He said the social impact of such a decision will improve the lives of over 355 million Indian women, far outweighing the short term revenue loss (less than Rs 80 crore) to the Government exchequer.