Govt Asks Solar Manufacturers to Submit List of Items for Basic Custom Duty Exemption

In a step towards providing further relief to domestic solar manufacturers in the country, the Government on Thursday has asked the solar photovoltaic (PV) manufacturers and related associations to submit their list of items to be included in the Basic Custom Duty (BCD) exemption list.

In this regard, the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) has issued a notification requesting “solar PV manufacturers and solar PV manufacturer associations to provide list of machinery and capital goods required for inclusion in Basic Custom Duty (BCD) exemption list”.

Since, the Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s Budget announcement on February 01, 2020, there is a lot of confusion prevailing among the solar industry related to basic custom duty on imports.

So, the MNRE had raised this matter with the Finance Ministry for exemption of BCD on import of capital goods required for setting up of manufacturing units for the manufacturing of solar PV modules, cells, wafers, ingots and polysilicon.

Earlier, MNRE through its notification dated June 30, 2017 of the Department of Revenue, Ministry of Finance stated that “exemption from payment of BCD is available to goods required for manufacturing of goods falling under Tariff Head 8541.”

Now, the Finance Ministry has suggested the MNRE for finalizing a list, in consultation with the Department of Heavy Industries (DHI), of such machinery and capital goods required for setting up of manufacturing units so that they can be considered for inclusion in ‘List 19’ of its earlier June 2017 notification.

Besides, earlier in July 2018, the government imposed 25 percent safeguard duty on import of solar cells from China and Malaysia for two years to protect domestic players from steep rise in the inbound shipments of the product.

It had imposed 25 per cent safeguard duty for the time period from July 30, 2018, to July 29, 2019. This was to gradually come down to 20 percent between July 30, 2019, and January 29, 2020, and 15 per cent during the January 30, 2020 and July 29, 2020, period.

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