FM Nirmala Sitharaman rejects ‘tariff king’ charge, says India has just 8 tariff rates

Is India a tariff king, as has been claimed by the commentary in the US? Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday said it is not, with India having reduced the tariff rates to eight, including the zero per cent rate.Speaking at the EXIM Bank Trade Conclave in Delhi, Sitharaman said the government has undertaken a lot of reforms in reducing the burden on trade by cutting down tariffs to support manufacturing and value addition, promote exports and to facilitate trade.

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“The rationalisation of customs structure for industrial goods was done (in the Budget). To remove seven tariff rates. For those who still believe in the commentary, which was made in the US that India may be the tariff king. No, | want two things to be remembered. Given our system of things, we seek parliamentary approval for deciding on the tariff rate, obtain from the parliament the permission to go up to a certain level but effectively you are at a far lower level. Effective tariff rate is at a far lower level. But what gets published in the gazette would be that level for which you obtained permission from the Parliament and it is that level which appears everywhere and people then tend to think, probably rightly, that’s the rate at which we are imposing tariffs““So our procedures have given us the not-so-desirable picture of being very, very restrictive and regressive about tariffs. Many of them are already far lower than the rate at which the gazette notification came after the approval of the Parliament. But even after that, seven tariff rates have been removed in this Budget, reducing the total to just eight. So for those of us who still think there is still a tariff story in India, | want this to be clear, there are only just eight (tariff rates) including the zero rate,” she said.US President Donald Trump has frequently called India the “tariff king” citing high tariffs. India is currently in talks to finalise a trade deal