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Budget to push growth in manufacturing, trade: Commerce Secy
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SME Times News Bureau | 03 Feb, 2021
The Budget for 2021-22 extensively and comprehensively envisages several
initiatives and areas of focus, aimed at enhancing India's overall
competitiveness and manufacturing capacities, which would enable
growth, diversification and technological enhancement of India's
exports, Commerce Secretary Anup Wadhawan said on Wednesday.
These
cover both ease of doing business in the area of approvals and
procedures, and the physical environment for investment, targeting a
plug and play eco-system for investors, he said.
Briefing the
media on the Budget 2021-22 initiatives, the commerce secretary said
that one primary area of focus is the creation of a robust
infrastructure, logistics and utilities environment for the
manufacturing sector.
Some of these measures include a scheme
for Mega Investment Textiles Parks (MITRA), which will create world
class infrastructure with plug and play facilities to enable the
creation of global champions in the sector, benefiting from economies of
scale and agglomeration. Seven Textile Parks will be established over
three years.
He said that further, steps like substantial
investments in the development of modern fishing harbours and fish
landing centres will be made in five major fishing harbours at Kochi,
Chennai, Visakhapatnam, Paradip, and Petuaghat, along with a
multipurpose Seaweed Park in Tamil Nadu, are proposed. These measures
are expected to boost exports from the textiles and marine sector.
Wadhawan
said that for the promotion of exports from the agriculture sector, the
"Operation Green" scheme of Ministry of Food Processing Industry, which
is presently limited to onion, potatoes and tomatoes, has been
increased to 22 perishable items. This would promote creation of
infrastructure and value addition for horticulture products.
Also,
the Budget allocation for the schemes such as Agriculture Export Policy
(AEP) and Transport and Marketing Assistance (TMA) has been enhanced,
which will help in the implementation of AEP in States and boost
agriculture exports.
Speaking on the plantation sector, the
Commerce secretary said that Rs. 1,000 crores have been provided in the
Budget for the welfare of tea workers, especially women and their
children. This will benefit around 10.75 lakh tea workers, including
6.23 lakh women workers engaged in the big tea estates of Assam and West
Bengal. In addition, around 1.47 lakh small tea growers are also likely
to be benefited.
Wadhawan said that this Budget also promotes
ease of doing business through rationalisation of procedures, easing of
compliances and trade facilitation measures. The measures include
certain changes in the provisions relating to ADD and CVD levies,
mandatory filing of bills of entry before the end of day preceding the
day of arrival of goods, he added.
He further added that
streamlining of the ADD / CVD provisions, including measures aimed at
enforcing anti-absorption, will potentially enable a level playing for
domestic industry through addressing unfair trade practices.
The
commerce Secretary said that the Budget has proposed rationalisation of
customs duty structure with a thrust on both easy and competitive access
to raw material and infant industry protection objectives to encourage
exports, particularly of value-added products.
This includes
reduction in duties on critical raw-material such as iron and steel,
copper scrap, naptha, nylon fibre and yarn, etc. To rationalise the duty
structure of gold and silver, the rates have been reduced to 7.5% from
12.5% with Agriculture Infrastructure and Development Cess of 2.5 %.
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Customs Exchange Rates |
Currency |
Import |
Export |
US Dollar
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66.20
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64.50 |
UK Pound
|
87.50
|
84.65 |
Euro
|
78.25
|
75.65 |
Japanese
Yen |
58.85 |
56.85 |
As on 13 Aug, 2022 |
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