New Delhi: The government has increased Custom Duty on 19 items, including jet fuel, ACs and refrigerators to curb imports of non-essential goods.
The Ministry of Finance issued a notification on Wednesday listing the items that will bear the increase in import duty. It has become operational since midnight last.
The Finance Ministry said, these changes aim at narrowing the Current Account Deficit. The total value of imports of these items in the year 2017-18 was about 86 thousand Crore rupees.
The import duty was doubled to 20 per cent on ACs, Household refrigerators and washing machines less than ten kilogram. Besides, the import duty on Speakers and Radial Car tyres has been hiked from 10 per cent to 15 per cent, while on footwears it was increased from 20 per cent to 25 per cent.
In the jewellery section, for diamond items such as non-industrial diamond (other than rough diamonds) — cut and polished; semi processed, half cut or broken diamonds; lab grown diamonds and cut and polished coloured gemstones, the basic customs duty has been increased from 5 per cent to 7 per cent.
The government has also announced an import duty of 5 per cent on aviation turbine fuel, earlier it was nil.
Ms Kalinga