Crop Care Federation of India (CCF) has urged the Finance Ministry to incentivize the indigenous agrochemical Industry in the upcoming Union Budget 2024-25.  

Suggesting Finance Ministry on the proposed budget, Rajju Shroff, Chairman Emeritus, CCFI, said: “The Ministry of Finance should formulate a favorable policy, which provides a fresh impetus to our economy that benefits all stakeholders in the ecosystem, especially farmers.  The focus of the budget should be to ensure that agrochemicals earn a share in the global trade.  With increased import bills, and increased global competition in the domestic market, earning foreign exchange is the need of hour for this Champion sector”.

Protecting the interest of Indian agrochemical players, Deepak Shah, Chairman, CCFI, urged: “There is an imperative need to increase custom duty on import of agrochemicals both on Technical & formulations from existing 10%. CCFI has reiterated the long pending demand of Indian agrochemical industry and strongly recommends enhancing custom duty on Technical to 20% and 30% on import of all formulations or at least maintain a delta of 10% between the two to minimize import of formulations which has no value addition, and quality on several occasions is questionable. We are a trade surplus industry and Indian manufacturers which account for 85% of exports are committed to make India as a manufacturing hub towards Atmanirbhar Bharat. 

Another aspect is the custom tariff under chapter 3808 where only pesticides can be imported, has a major lacuna. With almost 320 Technicals & 850 formulations registered, the HSN codes are limited to only 60 in number in the custom tariff manual, with the result over 85% of the imports are classified under OTHERS category making it impossible to check proliferation of imports without specifications or quantity checks. CCFI has urged the Ministry to facilitate the process to finalise the long standing commitment to create new HSN Codes in 8digits so that there is total accountability for quantity, source and place of origin for imports.

Rajesh Aggarwal, Vice Chairman, CCFI, seeks Production Linked Incentive (PLI) Scheme for agrochemicals as Champion sector.  Aggarwal said: “The industry had made a detailed proposal to Govt for including agrochemicals now a “Champion sector” under Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme so that the manufacturers could be incentivised to enhance their production (capacity utilisation being 55% at present).”

“All generics which constitute 80% globally are able to enhance their production to not only meet domestic demand but also exports which have now crossed Rs. 44,000 crore, 2nd highest in the world. We expect another fresh investment of Rs 12,000 crore in next 3 years provided a favorable decision is taken on priority,” Aggarwal opined.