Crude palm oil and not so crude notification- Government's not so clear damage control
Government had decided to reduce the duty on palm oil and soya bean oil by 5%, but they did not know how to amend the notification. First they issued Notification No. 87/2007 dated 23.7.2007, whereby Notification No. 21/2002 - Cus was amended to
1. Add a new Sl.No29A to make the applicable duty of 40% for heading 1507 10 00 or 1507 9010. This was 45% as per the Tariff rate earlier. So 5% reduction is correctly applied. No problem.
2. For Sl. No. 34, the rate was fixed at 40%. This is Crude palm oil and the duty was earlier 50%. So there was a mistake here. Instead of 5% reduction there was a reduction of 10%. Government mistakes are excepted; so they issued a corrigendum to say that the duty is 45% and not 40% and even those who cleared at 40% were only too willing to pay at the higher rate of 45%.
Now to cover up this goof, this Sl. No. 34 is deleted and the whole item is included in Sl. No. 30 with 45% rate. What happened to the corrigendum? Is it fair for the government to confuse the trade so much?
NOTIFICATION NO. , Dated: August 2, 2007