Customs tariff database goes online

The union finance ministry has released the first onilne version of the customs tariff database for India. Arvind Virmani, chief economic advisor in the finance ministry, released the online version of the customs tariff database in New Delhi on Friday.

The tariff database was compiled by the economic division of the department of economic affairs jointly with the Academy of Business Studies on behalf of the ministry of finance.

Speaking on the occasion, Virmani said the database will help in analysing the issues related to customs tariff very quickly and in a user-friendly way.

"This will help in the customs reforms process and help businessmen, researchers and those interested in this to get reliable data online without referring to bulk ebooks," virmani said, adding the database will also help the government in carrying out customs duty reforms.

He said a beginning to identify customs reform plans was made in the Economic Survey this year as also in the last year.

Customs tariff in India is a complex subject with 11,000 tariff codes, 328 exemption notifications along with 591 entries in the `Jumbo' notification giving effective duties against specific tariff codes under exemption. Apart from this, there are about 150 amending notifications issued during the course of the year. The database consists of two sections: