India increased the customs duty on articles of precious metals, including silver, from 20% to 25% on February 1, 2023.<\/p>\n
India has raised the import duty on jewellery and articles made from precious metals to 25%<\/strong>, up from 20%, effective 1 February 2023<\/strong>.<\/p>\n The increase covers gold, silver and platinum items, as well as imitation jewellery. It widens the duty gap between finished goods and the raw metal bars to 10%<\/strong>, a move designed to push more production into domestic workshops.<\/p>\n The change is part of the 2023-24 Union Budget, published by the Ministry of Commerce & Industry on the evening of 1 February1<\/a><\/sup>. It comes alongside a package of measures aimed at boosting exports and manufacturing, including tax cuts on inputs for electric vehicles, mobile phones and shrimp feed.<\/p>\n For jewellery importers, the higher rate adds roughly $50 to the delivered cost of every $1,000<\/strong> of goods inside the new tariff. The ministry said in a statement that the move would \u201cdiscourage cheap imports from China and encourage domestic manufacturing\u201d2<\/a><\/sup>.<\/p>\n The same budget also removed the 5% duty on lab-grown diamond seeds<\/strong>, the tiny slivers of diamond used as the starting point for synthetic stones. A separate HS code for lab-grown diamonds will be created to track trade in the sector1<\/a><\/sup>. The government has approved a \u20b9242 crore ($29.5m; \u00a324m)<\/strong> research grant to the Indian Institute of Technology Madras over five years to develop home-grown production methods.<\/p>\n Other sectors see the opposite treatment. Import duty on fish meal, which makes up 40% of the cost of farmed shrimp, has been cut to 5% from 15%<\/strong>1<\/a><\/sup>. The ministry expects the lower rate to make Indian shrimp more competitive on global markets and to reduce overfishing of juvenile fish used in domestic feed production.<\/p>\n