The Hindu Business Line : No rollback of Budget proposals: Chidambaram

New Delhi, March 4 The Finance Minister, Mr P. Chidambaram, on Tuesday made it clear that there would be no rollback on any Budget proposals even as he assured industry that any ‘inadvertent errors’ would be corrected.

“There is not going to be any rollback. But if any inadvertent error… someone pointed out pesticides, any inadvertent error, we are modest enough to correct it. So, there is no rollback,” Mr Chidambaram told captains of industry at a post Budget meeting organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) here today.

On interest rates, Mr Chidambaram felt that there was scope for deposit and lending rates to drop, but the matter was in the domain of RBI.

He also rejected the tyre industry’s demands that the existing inverted duty structure on rubber be corrected. It was pointed out to him that natural rubber attracted basic customs duty of 20 per cent, when tyres attracted customs duty of 10 per cent.

“There are 20 Members of Parliament from Kerala who are opposed to duty cut on natural rubber. I think what they say is a genuine case… Not all inverted duty can be corrected. It is not possible. I don’t think there can be a clean up of inverted duty. You have to suffer some inverted duty. Every time you enter into FTA or early harvest programme, there will be inverted duty. We are doing our best to correct as many as possible. If you tell me of a duty other than rubber, I am willing to address it,” Mr Chidambaram said. Some of the industrialists representing the auto sector felt that there was no merit in the levy of 24 per cent excise duty on ‘other than small cars’ category, when the excise duty on small cars was pegged at 12 per cent. “You are clubbing the large cars with pan masala category which also attracts 24 per cent,” a CII member pointed out.