Chennai: Over 35,000 jewellery shops in Tamil Nadu downed their shutters Wednesday at the start of a 3-day protest shutdown demanding that the Centre roll back the announcement on 1 per cent excise duty on jewellery proposed in the Union Budget 2016 – 17.
This one per cent levy as excise duty will further affect the industry, says Madras Jewellers and Diamond Merchants’ Association president Jayanthilal Challani.
“We will be deciding our further course of action in a few days,” he told reporters here when asked about the next plan of action. While presenting the Budget, Union fimance Minister Arun Jaitley said the government proposes to levy one per cent excise duty on jewellery without input credit or 12.5 per cent with input tax credit on articles of jewellery excluding silver jewellery other than studded with diamonds and other precious stones.
All India Gem and Jewellery Trade Federation, zonal chairman N. Anantha Padmanabhan said the central government’s proposal was a big disappointment for the traders and would be further intensifying the protest. “We were expecting that the condition of providing PAN card for purchase of jewels worth Rs. 2 lakh to go above Rs. 5 lakh. But it did not happen. We will be meeting government officials in Delhi to express our views shortly, he said.
On an average, jewellery shops in Tamil Nadu and Puducherry handle business of 800-1000 kilos of gold every day, he said and added that around Rs.600-700 crore worth of business would be impacted across the country due to the strike.
The news report, “Over 35,000 jewellery shops to down shutters in TN” published in these columns on March 2, contained a telephonic reaction about the strike from S. Santha Kumar, general secretary of
The Madras Jewellers and Diamond Merchants’ Association in which he pointed to a possible loss of Rs 250 cr sales per day in Tamil Nadu. Those comments were inadvertently attributed to T. Shanta Kumar, managing director of the Coimbatore-based Kirtilal Kalidas Jewellers Pvt. Ltd.
