Tobacco Lobby Opposes Move To Shift Customs Office.

GUNTUR: Tobacco industry is fuming over the Centre's move to shift the office of customs and central excise commissionerate to Vijayawada from the city.

Sources said the Union finance ministry is seriously planning to relocate the commissionerate office to Vijayawada in view of better revenues it will gain through the central excise pool. While more than 300 manufacturing units are located in and around Vijayawada, Guntur has only 187 units. Sources said the presence of airport near Vijayawada is one of the main reasons prompting the senior officials in the finance ministry to shift the office from Guntur.

While the central excise department garners Rs 167 crore from Krishna district, only Rs 81 crore accrues from Guntur district. Thanks to the presence of a good number of manufacturing units in and around Vijayawada, the Centre pockets Rs 126.35 crore from service tax alone while Guntur nets only Rs 32.01 crore. "The proposal to relocate the Guntur commissionerate is not new. But, we cannot say when it will be shifted," said C P Rao, chief commissioner, central excise and customs. The proposal to shift the commissionerate was first made a decade ago but the Centre had reportedly withdrawn it after the tobacco lobby took strong objection to it.

With the Centre raking up hundreds of crores from various taxes on tobacco and tobacco-related products, it did not want to displease the traders, mainly located in Guntur. But Guntur lost the sheen after the Centre removed the excise duty on raw tobacco two years ago. Yet, the move to relocate the office hasn't gone down well with traders and exporters here. "We export Rs 4,200 crore worth tobacco annually from India, chiefly from Guntur, providing huge revenues to the Centre. How could they shift the commissionerate without discussing the matter with us," asked an exporter Mittapalli Umamaheswara Rao.

According to Tobacco Board authorities, 229 companies have registered as exporters of tobacco products while another 157 are registered under the unmanufactured tobacco exporters' category. The customs commissionerate offers the export house tag, which provides the exporters get NOC seal on the containers at their processing units. "If the local office is shifted, it would create more problems for us," a trader remarked. The traders are already at sea with growers for refusing to take part in auctions at various platforms.

The Guntur commissionerate, which was set up in late '70s, covers East and West Godavari, Krishna, Guntur, Prakasam and Nellore districts under its ambit, fetching more than Rs 1,200 crore revenue for Centre annually.

Source : timesofindia.indiatimes.com