Previously, there was a 20 per cent export duty on crust leather and a 10 per cent import duty on wet blue leather. The industry expects that these changes will strengthen the tanning industry and promote exports of value-added products.
The country's prominent industry body, the Council for Leather Exports (CLE), said, “The budget has focused on a product scheme for the footwear and leather sector. It will help enhance productivity, competitiveness, and exports by over ₹1.1 lakh crore ($12.58 billion).”
“The scheme will support design capacity component manufacturing and machinery required for production of non-leather quality footwear. It will support thrust areas like design capacity, component manufacturing and machinery required for production of footwear and products. The industry will have 22 lakh jobs with total turnover of ₹400,000 crore including exports turnover of ₹110,000 crore,” Rajendra Kumar Jalan, chairman of CLE, said in a statement
Dilip Kapur, founder and president of Hidesign, said, “For the leather industry the good news is the customs duty on leather wet blue material has been taken off. It should help in key raw material cost. But the key problem in the economy and for retail, private consumption has slowed down because with inflation, the government’s share of GDP went up and disposable income for private consumption went down. However, the reduction in income tax for middle class should help the industry.”
ALCHEMPro News Desk (KUL)
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