Questions from the European Union, Japan and
the United States to India regarding Indian Customs Notification No 11/2014
communication from the European Union, Japan and the
United States
The
following communication, dated 1 April 2016, is being
circulated at the request of the delegations of the European Union, Japan and
the United States.
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The Notification No. 24/2005 exempted
products classified under HS 8517 from customs duty, thereby implementing
India’s commitments under the Information Technology Agreement (ITA). On 11
July 2014, India adopted the Customs Notification No 11/2014 that raised duties
to 10% ad valorem for the following
products:
(i) Soft switches and Voice over Internet
Protocol (VoIP) equipment, namely, VoIP phones, media gateways, gateway
controllers and session border controllers;
(ii) Optical transport equipment, combination of
one or more of Packet Optical Transport Product or Switch (POTP or POTS),
Optical Transport Network (OTN) products, and IP Radios;
(iii) Carrier
Ethernet Switch, Packet Transport Node (PTN) products, Multiprotocol Label
Switching-Transport Profile (MPLS-TP) products;
(iv) Multiple
Input / Multiple Output (MIMO) and Long Term Evolution (LTE) Products.
In accordance with Customs Notification no.
12/2016, the above-listed products are classified under heading 8517. More
concretely, these products appear to be classified in the First Schedule to the
Customs Tariff Act of India (MFN Tariff Schedule) under tariff lines 8517 62 90
and 8517 69 90. These tariff lines are subject to a 10% MFN duty as
reflected also in the 2015-2016 version of India’s MFN tariff schedule[1].
However, according to India’s recently
certified WTO Schedule of Concessions in HS2007 (WT/Let/1072), tariff line 8517
62 90 is bound to "zero".
The European Union, Japan and the United States
would like to ask India to clarify the following aspects:
1. Could India confirm that the four products
mentioned above fall under codes 8517 62 90 or 8517 69 90? If products within
the four categories subject to Customs Notification No. 11/2014 are classified
under one of these two tariff lines, please specify which products are
classified under each tariff line? If they are not classified under those subheadings,
what are the tariff lines under which India classifies the above-listed product
categories?
2. Could
India confirm that the four above-listed product categories subject to Customs Notification No. 11/2014 are now subject to 10% duty rate?
3. What are India’s WTO bound tariff commitments
for each of the four above-listed product categories subject to Customs
Notification No. 11/2014?
4. How does India justify introducing 10% import
duty for products falling under 8517 62 in light of India’s commitment pursuant
of the ITA and in light of its concessions in the WTO Schedule, recently
updated in HS2007 which binds the whole subheading at 0% of duty rate?
5. Should India consider that the products
falling under 8517 62 are not covered by India’s commitment pursuant of the
ITA, could India clearly present the reasons?
6. Should India consider that the products
falling under 8517 69 are not covered by India’s commitment pursuant of the
ITA, could India clearly present the reasons?
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