Rear Admiral N. K. Mishra (Retd), Chairman and Managing Director, Hindustan Shipyard Ltd (HSL), on Thursday said “unfair taxation” has been hurting the Indian shipbuilding industry.
For example, according to Mishra, service taxes are imposed on a manufacturing industry like shipbuilding.
“There is an unfair taxation process in the shipbuilding industry. Why is service tax imposed on us? There are a lot of complications,” Mishra told presspersons here after a seminar on the defence industry organised by CII.
He added that there were “issues” also in taxing scrap and raw materials used in manufacturing ships. “At times, there are difficulties in identifying which are imported scraps and which are not during the taxation process,” Mishra said.
Organised shipbuilding in India accounts for a 0.1 per cent of the global industry. Mishra pointed out that apart from the four public sector companies — HSL, Mazagon Dock Ltd, Goa Shipyard Ltd and Garden Reach Shipbuilders & Engineers Ltd — the major private players were ABG, Bharti and L&T.