GJEPC and Commerce Minister meet to discuss how the industry can meet its export targets

By

Isabelle Crossley

Published
Apr 19, 2022

The Minister for Commerce and Industry Piyush Goyal met with the Gem and Jewellery Export Promotion Council to discuss how the industry can meet its ambitious export targets for the 2023 financial year.

The GJEPC’s chairman Colin Shah and a number of other dignitaries met with Goyal at the end of last week to ask for policy support to reach the export target set for this fiscal, the GJEPC reported on its website. The export target for the Indian gems and jewellery industry has been set at $45 billion for the 2023 financial year which began at the start of the month. 
 
The meeting included commerce secretary B V R Subrahmanyam and Ministry of Commerce and  Industry joint secretary Vipul Bansal who represented the ministry and its interests. The Commerce Ministry has set export targets for numerous segments of the economy with the general goal of boosting exports and reducing its trade deficit. 

The GJEPC requested policy support in a number of areas to enable it to have a strong chance of reaching the export targets including asking for the abolition of the Equalisation Levy. Introduced in India in 2016, the Equalisation Levy taxes certain digital business-to-business transactions. 
 
The traders’ body also requested the implementation of a Presumptive Tax Regime for Special Notified Zones. This would make paying tax more simple for these manufacturing hubs as they would be able to just pay tax on a percentage of their income as opposed to calculating expenses and deducting those from income before tax.