Appliance and consumer electronics manufacturers urge government to encourage energy efficient product manufacturing.
Recently, a request has been made by home appliance manufacturing units like Godrej Appliances, Intex, Philips Lightning, and Panasonic to the government to reduce taxes on locally manufactured products. They have also urged the government to increase the import duties and improve the incentives given to domestic product manufacturers.
The Appliances and Consumer Electronics (ACE) industry have also requested the government to boost the production of energy saving appliances. As per the industry, the home appliances like refrigerators, washing machines and air conditioners are no more luxury items and hence taxes on these must be reduced. The committee has suggested to reduce taxes for 4 and 5 star energy efficient products so that customers adopt these products. The tax bracket for home appliances should also be decreased to 18% from 28%; this suggestion was made by the EVP and business head of Godrej Appliances, Kamal Nandi. He went ahead to add if the government wants more sustainability and success of the “Make in India” initiative, local manufacturing must be incentivized. Panasonic CEO and India and South East Asia president, Manish Sharma spoke in the same line, stating custom duties on imports should be increased so the people are more interested to buy locally made products.
Sumit Joshi, the Managing Director and Vice Chairman of Philips India Lightning welcomed the recent rise in customs duty on finished bulbs and lights; there has been a rise in the customs duty of these items from 10% to 20%. On the other hand, IntexCFO Rajeev Jain has requested for reduction in the GST rate of mobile parts, sub parts and batteries from 28% to 12%.
Keeping in mind the upcoming budget, every sector is expecting something positive and the manufacturing units are not exceptions.