The government has set up a committee to examine the impact of customs duties, export incentives and refunds, goods and services tax and export clearance procedures on India’s outbound shipments amid a challenging global environment.
A passenger arriving from Kuwait has accused a customs officer at Ahmedabad airport of accepting a bribe in exchange for allowing him to carry gold through clearance. The allegation, made via an email to senior officials, has prompted a full-fledged internal investigation.
CBIC issued Notification No. 31/2025-Customs dated 30.05.2025. It Seeks to extend the specified condition of exemption to imports of Yellow Peas & to reduce the basic custom duty on crude soya bean oil, crude sunflower oil, and crude palm oil from 20% to 10%
The Union government slashing the customs duty on imported gold from 15% to 6% in July 2024 has weaned many of the rackets away from smuggling of the precious metal and some of them have switched to smuggling of hybrid ganja as it fetches a higher profit margin, sources in the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) and Customs Preventive Commissionerate (CCP) told TNIE.
In the last Budget Speech 2024, Sitharaman announced customs rate cuts on some items, including mobile phones, charger and some cancer drugs. Apart from this, she had also proposed to comprehensively review the customs duty structure within six months.
To help passengers get timely refunds for failed custom payment transactions the customs department has released an advisory outlining the guidelines. These guidelines relate to how passengers can get refunds for failed customs duty payment transactions done through the ICEGATE portal. Do note that this advisory is relevant for only those international travellers, who have brought goods from abroad above the duty free baggage limit of that respective good. For example: Gold above the value worth Rs 50,000 is over the baggage limit and so customs duty must be paid.
The government is likely to go for a major overhaul of the basic customs duty on more than 100 items in the Budget for FY26, in order to align the rates with global trade dynamics and correct the inverted duty structure, according to a senior official.
The government is reviewing customs duties on over two-dozen items, including gold, and may raise the levy on the yellow metal if it is found that the recent duty reduction triggered its consumption instead of achieving the stated policy objective of domestic value addition, two people aware of the development said.
The Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC) issued Circular no. 06/2024- Customs dated 07.06.2024 regarding Customs duty on Display Assembly of a cellular mobile phone.
CBIC issued Notification no. 22/2024-Customs dated 02.04.2024 to exempt the goods ‘Kala namak rice’ falling under tariff item 1006 30 90 subject to conditions mentioned in the said notification. The notification is effective from 03.04.2024.
