CANBERRA: The Kerala Roller Flour Millers Association has strongly objected to the Centre’s move to further raise the customs duty on imported Australian wheat, saying it would affect the entire roller flour mills industry in South India.
The projected 25 per cent customs duty will take the landing cost of imported wheat to over ₹2,400 per quintal, which is too high to be afforded by the consumers, PK Ahammed, the Association President said.
South India imported 4 lakh tonnes (lt) of Australian premium white wheat and it enabled the Association to maintain the price of wheat products within reasonable rates and quality. However the imposition of 10 per cent customs duty with effect from August 7 had made a serious setback to South Indian roller flour mills.
“We had to pay customs duty on four ship loads (about 1,45,000 tonnes) of wheat which was purchased prior to imposition of custom duty as they arrived after August 7. The total landing cost of imported wheat with custom duty amounted to ₹2,100 a quintal,” he said.
In view of the customs duty on imports and with the prices going up in Australia, he pointed out there would not be any more imports. The price of Australian wheat has increased up to $265 a tonne and this, coupled with hike in the dollar exchange rate by about ₹2 per dollar, affected the prices.
“We would request the government not to take any steps for increasing the Customs duty any further as even now the cost of imported wheat is exorbitantly high,” he said.
According to him, the situation is very grave as the new crop in India will be available from April 2016 only. Even then, it is not sure whether the new crop will be of good quality. If the quality continues to be inferior, it will be a very critical situation.
