Import duties on 25 critical minerals, 36 drugs removed

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Saturday announced the removal of import duties on 12 critical minerals, lithium-ion batteries scrap, cobalt products, LED, zinc and 36 drugs for cancer and rare diseases.

Presenting her eighth straight budget, Sitharaman also proposed not to levy more than one cess or surcharge.

She also proposed to exempt social welfare surcharge on 82 tariff lines that are subject to a cess.

"I propose to fully exempt customs duties on 25 critical minerals and reduce BCD on two of them. This will provide a major fillip to the processing and refining of such minerals and help secure their availability for these strategic and important sectors," Sitharaman said in her budget speech.

The minister also proposed to add 35 additional capital goods for EV battery manufacturing and 28 additional capital goods for mobile phone battery manufacturing to promote the manufacturing of lithium-ion batteries both for mobiles and EVs.

"Now I propose to fully exempt Cobalt power and waste, the scrap of litium-ion battery, lead, zinc and 12 more critical minerals. This will help secure availability for manufacturing in India and promote more jobs our youth."

Considering ship building has a long gestation period, she proposed to continue exemption of Basic Customs Duty (BCD) on raw materials, components, consumables or parts for the manufacture of ships for another ten years. She also proposed the same dispensation for ship breaking to make it competitive.

She also said that in line with Make in India policy and to rectify the inverted duty structure, she proposed to increase BCD on interactive flat panel display from 10 per cent to 20 per cent and reduce BCD to five per cent on open cell and other components.

She said, "To provide relief to patients, paticularly those suffering from cancer, rare diseases and other severe chronic diseases, I propose to add 36 life-saving drugs and medicines to the list of medicines fully exempted from basic customs duty."

She also proposed to add six life-saving medicines to list attracting concessional customs duty of five per cent.

Full exemption and concessional duty will also respectively apply for the bulk drugs for the manufacture of these drugs.

She also proposed to fully exempt BCD on wet blue leather to facilitate imports for domestic value addition and employment.