India agrees to simplify duty refund procedure

NEW DELHI/KATHMANDU, Dec 6: India has agreed to settle excise duty, which so far used to be refunded later to the government under a mechanism called Duty Refund Procedure (DRP), on imports made from India at the customs points itself.

The positive response from India came when commerce secretaries from the two countries met on the first day of bilateral Inter-governmental committee (IGC) meeting in New Delhi on Monday.

Nepal´s commerce secretary Purushottam Ojha and his Indian counterpart Rahul Khullar are heading the negotiations which will end on Tuesday.

“The process of duty refund is lengthy and in the absence of refunding system at customs points, India´s outstanding due to Nepal has been piling up for years. Hence, we had requested for the change and the Indian side has responded to it positively,” a high-level source told Republica.

After the first day meeting, Secretary Ojha told Republica that India was positive toward all issues raised by Nepali sides. “We openly discussed all the issues on Monday. And India has responded to our major agendas positively,” said Ojha.

On the day, India also raised issues like providing land to Manipal College in Pokhara, waiving off 5 percent Agriculture Reform Fee (ARF) on Indian farm products, and widening the margin of preference - a difference in customs duty for Indian products and the same products imported from overseas countries, among others. It also raised the issue of protecting Indian investment in Nepal strongly.

Nepal, on the other hand, pushed for early review of Railway Service Agreement which should have been done in 2009, early operationalization of the Rohanpur-Sighabad route linking Bangladesh with Nepal and operationalization of Visakhapatnum port for Nepal´s third country trade.

It has also asked India to eliminate 4 percent additional duty that it has been imposing on over 162 Nepali products.

“We´ve requested India to recognize standard and quality certification issued by the Nepali labs for goods bound for India," said the source.

The delegation also asked India to provide financial and technical assistance for constructing Raxaul-Amlekhgunj pipeline (42 km long), a much-talked project that aims to facilitate petroleum trade.

Source : myrepublica.com