Customs duty on gold – will it come down again?
Posted on: 06/Mar/2014 11:29:56 AM
Minister of commerce and industry, Anand Sharma promised to take necessary steps to ensure enough supply of gold for the gold jewelry manufacturers. Last year, targeting to bring down the Current Account Deficit (CAD), the central government hiked the customs duty of gold from 2 to 10 per cent and also demanded for exporting 20 per cent of the imported gold metal as finished jewelry products. Additionally, the Reserve bank of India made few other restrictions on import of gold. This led to two main disastrous consequences: gold manufacturing got badly affected and gold smuggling is taking place in more numbers.
Further to all this, the gold jewelers pleaded to the government requesting to bring back the customs duty to 2 per cent like before. At this juncture, Anand Sharma made an announcement that the issue will be taken to the notice of federal ministry of finance. “Because of such government’s restrictions, several negative issues have started rising. In the current financial year, nearly 300 per cent of gold smuggling had happened,” he stated.
