The Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC) under the Ministry of Finance, India, released the General Exemptions & Customs Tariff Act with reductions in import duties on various products, including wood products (see table), on February 28, 2005. The reduction of the duties, which were previously reduced in February 2004, is part of an ongoing commitment to the WTO.
Import duties for most wood products were reduced below India's WTO bound rates for wood products, set at 40%. However, the effective customs duties are higher than the basic customs duties due to additional charges. The maximum Basic Customs Duty (BCD) has been reduced to 15% from 30% in the previous Act and the countervailing duty (CVD) on both logs and lumber has been dropped. Furthermore, the special additional duty (SAD) has been abolished on all imports, including wood and wood products, and has been replaced by an education assessment (“cess”) of 2% of the total applicable duty.
On top of the “cess”, goods shipped to some cities, such as Mumbai, will attract “Octroi” duties, which are a tax payable on demand for goods brought into Mumbai for use, consumption, or sale (generally ranging from 2% to 8%). In addition, customs clearing and forwarding charges may be in the range of 1% to 4%. Therefore, although the BCD is now 15%, except on logs, the effective duty after additional taxes will be 15.3% on sawn lumber and 34.4% on all other items. The effective duty on logs is 5.1%.
India is a significant consumer of tropical timber. In 2004, India was ITTO’s second largest consumer of tropical logs and sawnwood (almost 15.5 million m3 and 6 million m3, respectively), fourth largest consumer of veneer (247,000 million m3) and third largest consumer of plywood (nearly 1.7 million m3). The reduction in tariffs would likely result in
increased imports of tropical products to India to meet the growing needs of its huge wood industry and market.
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