India reduced import duty on copper cathode and ferroalloys imported from Japan. This duty revision is given under the India-Japan Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) effective from Apr 1, as per a notification by India’s Ministry of Finance. India reduced import duty on copper cathodes to 0.5pc from 0.9pc.
In 2019, India imported 131,541mt of copper cathodes, up by 63.15pc from 2018. Of the total, India imported 106,853mt of copper cathodes from Japan in 2019, up from 4,239mt in the prior year. India has become net importer of copper cathodes, after Vedanta’s Tuticorin smelter plant was shut down in May 2018 following protests from locals regarding pollution caused by the plant.
India also reduced import duty on iron, manganese and chrome ore and other base metal ores and concentrates to 0.2pc from 0.4pc. Import duty on ferro-manganese, silico-manganese, ferro-silico chromium, ferro nickel, ferro tungsten, ferro-silico tungsten was reduced to 0.5pc from 0.9pc. The import duty on ferro-silicon, ferro-chrome, ferro-molybdenum and ferro-silico magnesium remains zero. The import duty on stainless steel scrap has been reduced to 0.5pc from earlier 0.9pc.