Rationalise Customs duty

Besides removing exemptions, overall simplification is necessary

In the 2021 Union Budget earlier this year, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced that hundreds of exemptions in Customs duty were to be reviewed over the course of the year. Ms Sitharaman added that a new structure for Customs duty would be put in place by October. This was in addition to some tweaking of Customs duty done during the Budget, which she justified as helping certain sectors being targeted by the government, such as mobile phone manufacturing and auto parts. It has now been reported that the Union finance ministry has begun the process of reviewing 523 different