A tyre dealers’ federation has sought a cut in import duty of truck/bus radial tyres to 10%, against 15% now, and also rationalisation of anti-dumping duty.
The federation alleged that the for the first time in the last four years, domestic truck/bus radial tyres and tubes are being sold at a high cost by tyre companies, citing unwarranted reasons.
In a memo to the director-general of the DGAD, the federation pointed out that a pair of truck radial tyres, which were sold at Rs 38,000 last year, are now being sold at Rs 43,500 and similar is the case for its variants.
According to the federation, looking back at the events of the last 10-12 months in particular, the rupee has tumbled and import duty has been hiked on radial truck tyres by 50% (from 10% to 15%) in the Union Budget. This was coupled with the adverse impact of the anti-dumping duty which was imposed in August 2017.
The federation further pointed out that diesel and tyres put together 90% of variable operating expenses of a trucker per vehicle per trip. Unfortunately, the goverment bypassed the interest of transporters and tyre dealers, who carry 75% of their sales to customers on unsecured credit and any increase in price by tyre majors would increase the inventory cost and impact their profit margins. The customers are being deprived of high performance and safer truck radial tyres of global standards duly certified by BIS under the Tyre Quality Control Order, 2009.
Hence, the director-general should look into their requests, including bringing import duty to 10% or lower it from 15% on truck/ bus radial tyres, they said. They want the antidumping duty to be rationalised in direct relationship to appreciation in the dollar against the rupee as antidumping duty gets irrationally high on imports of such essential products of truck radial tyres, they said.
Therefore, the government must immediately consider requets/suggestions in the larger interest of the road transport industry and domestic tyre trade to bring some semblance of free and fair play of market forces with reference to truck radial tyres, the federation pointed out in its memo.
Source: Financial Express