Candle, poly chips, coronary stents exempted from duty

New Delhi, Mar 20 (UNI) Finance Minister P Chidamabaram today announced a slew of concessions, including exemption of coronary stents and coronary stent systems from customs duty and candles, bricks and scented supari from excise duty, even while clarifying that the anonymous contribution to religious institutions will not be taxed.

Wrapping up a two-day long debate on the Finance Bill for 2006-07 inthe Lok Sabha, he said basic customs duty on Carbon Black Feed Stock and Polyester chips had been reduced to 10 per cent from 12.5 per cent. The customs duty on coronary stents and coronary stent systems for use with cardiac catheter had been fully exempted from customs duty as well as additional CV duty of four per cent.

On Direct taxes, Mr Chidamabaram said investment in term deposit with a scheduled bank would be eligible for deduction under section 80 C of the Income Tax act if the term deposits were issued by the scheduled bank in accordinance with a scheme framed and notified by the Centre.

He said scented supari, where the retail sale price was declared on the packages and such retail sale price did not exceed 50 paisa per package had been fully exempted from central excise duty.

Mr Chidambaram said candles and specified building bricks have been fully exempted from central excise duty.

Conceding the demand of the members from Kerala, he announced full exemption of hand operated rubber roller machines and hand operated copra dryers from central excise duty.

Mr Chidambaram put his foot down in respect to the demand for giving income tax exemption to anonymous contribution to educational and charitable institutions.

He defended his budget proposal to tax on marbles, saying that ''it is not a poor man's product.'' The minister clarified that the tax was only on cutting and polishing which had been a thriving business. ''Cutting and polishing of marble amount to manufacture,'' he told a BJP member who sought exemption of marble from excise duty.

He said food supplements, supplied free of cost, to weaker sections will continue to be exempted from tax .

Mr Chidamabaram clarified that soaps manufactured by units which are not small and tiny would have to pay excise duty. However, those units with an annual turnover of up to Rs one crore would not attract this tax.

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