The Council for Leather Exports (CLE) has urged the Government to include fiscal incentives in the Budget, such as the PLI program and the reintroduction of import tax exemptions on specific commodities, to stimulate production and exports. The council has also urged that the Government explore allowing the unfettered exporting of all added-value leathers, especially crust leathers, without any export duties, standards, inspection, testing, or certification.
CLE Chairman Sanjay Leekha stated that the import tariff exemption had been accessible to the sector for the previous 30 years but was abolished two years ago, making international leather availability problematic for the business.
Sanjay added, “In the scenario it is restored, it might guarantee that our goods and manufacturing industries would have accessibility to global leather and hence make them economically viable as well as more current with our goods offerings.”
He further stated that export duties should only be paid on rawhide and skins, as well as wet blue leathers and that anything else should be deemed to be finished and freely exported.
He continued, “This has truly become a need since, over the previous several years, our industry has lost about US $ 1 billion in exports. We can get back US $ 1 billion in exports if the rules are altered.”
The council has also requested that the PLI (Production Linked Incentive) policy be extended to the leather and footwear sectors in order to stimulate local manufacturing.
However, he expressed optimism that the dip is just transitory and that exports will recover.
On exports, there is a slight downward tendency owing to the global downturn this year.
He said, “We’ve set quite ambitious export ambitions for our sector. In fact, at its present level of around US $ 5 billion or slightly over, we estimate our sector to reach US $ 12.5 billion by 2030.”
