Developing Country - List of countries revised
SECTION 8B of the Customs Tariff Act, 1975 empowers the Central Government to impose safeguard duty. The first proviso to section 8B(1) reads -
Provided that no such duty shall be imposed on an article originating from a developing country so long as the share of imports of that article from that country does not exceed three per cent or where the article is originating from more than one developing countries, then, so long as the aggregate of the imports from developing countries each with less than three per cent. import share taken together does not exceed nine percent of the total imports of that article into India.
The term "developing country" is defined in section 8B(6) as below -
(a) "developing country" means a country notified by the Central Government in the Official Gazette for the purposes of this section;
By notification 103/98-Cus dated 14.12.1998 as amended by notification 62/99-Cus., dated 13-5-1999, 135 countries were notified to fall within the ambit of the term "developing country".
This notification has been superseded after more than 17 years.
The new notification now contains a list of 132 countries. Nineteen new countries have been added to the earlier list of "developing country" and twenty-two from the earlier list have been stripped of the tag of "developing country". Prominent among them - Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia lose their privileged status and Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Krygyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkey, Ukraine, Uzbekistan are now within the fold.
Acche din for them!