Nil, Blank and Free in Customs & Excise Tariff

EXPERT EYE

In the Central Excise Tariff, there are Blanks for many items such as live animals (horse, cow, bird etc), wheat, rice, which are unmanufactured items and even for electrical energy which is a manufactured item. Nil occurs for fish, fresh meat (of bovine animal, rabbit, swine etc), milk, butter, honey, human hair, bovine semen, betel leaves, bamboo etc. which are unmanufactured products and on some manufactured products also.

 

In Customs there are no Blanks nor Nil duties but the entry Free occurs for rye, barley, raw fur skin, newspaper, journals etc. In Customs it does not matter whether the items are manufactured or unmanufactured. But in Central Excise it makes all the difference. Unmanufactured products, under the Constitutional provision in the Seventh Schedule-Union List, Entry 84, are not excisable.

So when a Nil duty is shown against an entry of items like horse, cat, ass, bird etc it gives the meaning that horse and cat are excisable but the rate of duty is Nil. This is misleading and also fundamentally wrong. They are just not excisable goods and they don