NEW DELHI: The high rate of customs duty on gold may have acted as a deterrent for imports but it resulted in large-scale smuggling. It was highlighted during discussions at the annual meeting of the chief commissioners and directors general of customs and central excise here on Monday.
The customs officers provided gold seizure details which has almost doubled to more than rs 1,100 crore in 2014-15 as compared to Rs 692 crore in the previous year and Rs 99 crore two years ago.
The rise in smuggling and seizures was primarily on account of the government raising customs duty on gold from 8% to 10% in 2013 to discourage high imports.
India is the second largest importer of gold after China. The high rate of duty has also opened smuggling channels because the resultant difference in gold prices in India makes smuggling more remunerative, said an assessment report of the customs.
The customs report explains various modus operandi adopted to illicitly bring in gold, which include “body concealment, in toilets of planes, under aircraft seats, in the form of mobile phone batteries, spring coils of bar seats, buckles of belts, inside trolley bag handles, gold dust in henna powder, sketch pen refills, packets of dates, chocolate wrappers, LED televisions, laptops, emergency lights, staple pins, sealing machines, air compressors, etc”.
Interestingly, the value of gold seizures in 2014-15 was almost 90% of the total value of duty recovered by the government on commercial and other frauds that year. In the last fiscal, the duty recovered was Rs 1,237 crore.
Earlier, while inaugurating the two-day conference, finance minister Arun Jaitley appreciated the efforts of Central Board of Excise and Customs to improve the tax payer services by reaching out to the taxpayers. The CBEC has recently created three new directorates of Tax Payers Services, Performance Management and one for Goods and Services Tax which is awaiting passage in Parliament.
