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In an effort to curb another import from China, India on Tuesday hiked import duty on bamboo for agarbatti (incense stick) to 25 per cent.
“Customs duty on bamboo imports by agarbatti manufacturers hiked from 10 per cent to 25 per cent with immediate effect to encourage use of domestic bamboo for AtmaNirbhar Bharat,” Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Custom (CBIC) said in a tweet. CBIC is apex policy making body for indirect taxes such as Goods & Services Tax (at Central level) and Custom Duty.
The board said the 25 per cent customs duty rate shall now uniformly apply to any import of bamboo, including by traders. Uniform rate will help in avoiding misuse and rates related disputes. “This measure will benefit farmers immensely. MSME agarbatti manufacturers also to gain, as earlier only the large agarbatti manufacturers were able to import bamboo at lower rate,” it said.
Various research report suggests that India annually imports finished raw agarbatti to the tune of 1.10 lakh tonnes and round bamboo sticks to the tune of 40,000 tonnes. The Customs duty on raw agarbatti was 20 per cent and 30 per cent on round bamboo sticks. However, the Centre brought duty on raw agarbatti to zero and a concessional duty of 10 per cent is applied to round bamboo sticks imported from China. This affected local industries. Size of domestic agarbatti industry is over ₹6,000 crore.
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