Last year, the Union
Budget witnessed some commendable schemes being announced by Finance Minister for the betterment of the Indian Leather industry.
Where on one hand it announced the setting up of dormitories for women workers; Central Excise exemption limit for footwear was enhanced from Rs 250 to Rs 500 per pair.
The dormitory assistance no doubt was helpful in creating a comfortable boarding facility for women to stay closer to their workplace, it was also rewarding in terms of attracting fresh women workforce in the industry. The latter scheme was beneficial to the MSME manufacturers involved in the selling of footwear in the domestic market.
Rafeeque Ahmed, Chairman, Council for Leather Exports, welcomed the measures announced during the Union Budget 2012-13 and by the end of it he was much hopeful that more such schemes will be announced in the Union Budget 2013-14.
Whether the industry's wish-list gets its place in this year's Union Budget is yet to be decided.
As stated by R. Ramesh Kumar, Executive Director, Council for Leather Exports (CLE), they submitted five major proposals concerning the leather industry for Union Budget 2013-14:
- Amending description of existing machinery listed under Serial No. 390 of List 29 of Customs Notification No. 12/2012 dt. 17.3.2012 and addition of new machinery to facilitate import of more machinery used in leather sector
- To implement a system to avoid levy of anti-dumping duty on already exempted footwear machineries
- To enhance the duty free limit of import from 3% to 5% under Duty Free Import Scheme, to change the description of existing entries under the scheme, to include new inputs and to make some policy amendments
- Implementation of 2% interest subvention scheme for entire leather sector
- Request for Service Tax exemption for Export Promotion Councils including Council for Leather Exports and FIEO with retrospective affect from June 2005
- Procedural simplifications concerning Service Tax exemption Scheme
Source : economictimes.indiatimes.com