Budget 2021: What gets more expensive and what gets cheaper?
Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Monday presented the Union Budget for the financial year 2021-2022. The Budget comes at a time when India's economy has been reeling under the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. With this, certain items are set to become cheaper, while others will become more expensive. Let's take a look at what this year's Budget has in store.
Which items will become cheaper?
Sitharaman announced that the anti-dumping duty on steel/steel products will be scrapped. The government has proposed to reduce customs duty to 7.5% on imports of semi, flat and long products of non-alloy, alloy, and stainless steel. Gold and silver will get cheaper with the import duty being reduced to 7.5% from 12.5%. Other precious metals like platinum and palladium will also get cheaper.
Nylon clothes, copper items, electricity to get cheaper
Medical devices imported by international organizations and diplomatic missions are also set to become cheaper in the next fiscal. Further, nylon clothes, copper items, insurance, and electricity are among things that will become cheaper.
Which items will become more expensive?
Among imported products, mobile phones, power banks, compressors for refrigerators and air conditioners, raw silk, spandex fiber, LED lamps, solar lanterns, etc., are set to become more expensive as the FM proposed increasing customs duty on several items. The customs duty on raw silk has been raised to 15% from 10%. For solar lanterns, the customs duty has been raised to 15% from 7.5%.
Imported alcohol, finished leather products to become costlier
Imported alcoholic beverages will also get more expensive. An agri infra cess of 100% has been proposed on alcoholic beverages via the Agriculture Infrastructure and Development Cess (AIDC) scheme. Other imported items that are set to become more expensive include LED lamps, automobile parts (safety and toughened glasses, windscreen wipers, signaling equipment), finished leather products, cut and polished synthetic stones, etc.
