The Hindu : Rana's plea on excise duty

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Jan 31, 2003

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Rana's plea on excise duty

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI Jan. 30. With just a month left for the presentation of the Union Budget for 2003-04, the Union Textiles Minister, Kashiram Rana, today called on the Finance Minister, Jaswant Singh, and sought the lowering of excise duty to eight per cent on different segments of the textiles industry.

Making a presentation on the textile sector, Mr. Rana stressed that duty reduction was essential in the context of the need to make the sector more competitive, vis-à-vis, countries like China, which allow several exemptions to their exporters and thus help it prepare for the post quota regime beginning 2005.

Mr. Rana also sought the establishment of a textiles industry reconstruction fund with a corpus of Rs. 3,000 crores to Rs. 4,000 crores to provide assistance to viable sick units in the textiles sector. This, he said, was necessary as the existing mechanisms for the improvement of the sector like the Technology Upgradation Fund Scheme did not cover sick units even if they could be made viable. He also sought continuation of the exemption from VAT for the power loom sector, considering that there were several small-scale units in the sector. However, the idea was to have it as an option so that whoever claimed CENVAT could pay duty.

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