Responding to the long pending demands of the trade for allowing import of sunflower seeds at reduced duty, the Union Government has announced reduction in import duty on sunflower seed from 30 per cent earlier to 10 per cent.

A notification regarding this was issued by the Department of Revenue, Ministry of Finance, Government of India, on March 23, amending the previous notification No.12/2012-Customs, dated the March 17, 2012 and fixed the import duty at 10 per cent.

"Amendment to Notification No.12/2012-Customs, so as to reduce the basic Customs duty from 30 per cent to 10 per cent on sunflower seeds falling under tariff item 1206 00 90 (i.e. other than of seed quality) for the purposes extraction and refining of oil subject to actual user condition, for the period from April 1, 2017 to September 30, 2017," the notification read.

Welcoming the move, Atul Chaturvedi, President, Solvent Extractors' Association of India (SEAI), termed the step in the right direction for value-addition, employment generation and better capacity utilisation of domestic industry and supportive of the Government of India's Make in India policy.

"We have been representing to the Government for quite some time. We are happy that finally the Government has agreed to our request. Over the years, sunflower crop in India has practically got decimated. It makes eminent sense now that we get the seed from outside and crush it in India. And the sunflower seeds are not GM seed, so that problem is also not there," said Chaturvedi.

However, with duty reduction, importers will explore the import parity at international prices and India may look at sizeable import of the oilseed to ease the supply crunch for mills.

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