Jewellers of Gujarat in Delhi to meet the Finance minister

Ahmedabad, 26 March 2012

A group of jewelers from Gujarat is on visit to Delhi today to meet the Finance minister Pranab Mukherjee, MPs Ahmed Patel, LK Advani, Arun Jaitley and Sushma Swaraj and bureaucrats in Finance ministry to discuss ways to end the impasse over new proposed tax in Union budget.

Jewelers from Gujarat will participate in a rally in Delhi on the issue of introduction of new taxes.

Jewelers will hold a meeting in Ratanpol on Tuesday to discuss further actions.

All jewelers across Gujarat are already on indefinite strike.

-Jewelers are against the custom duty, but want the excise duty to go because they say it will give rise to the inspector raj. Jewelers say they have worked during the Gold Control and know how difficult it is to deal with excise officials.

-Jewelers say they are not against paying any sort of duty but against the harassment that various duties will give rise to.

-Jewelers apprehend that the taxes will encourage tax evasion.

-They claim that due to the new duty, 10 gm of gold has become expensive by an additional Rs 1,400.

-In last nine days, the jewelers have suffered Rs 20,000 crore loss due to strike.

-The centre has proposed 1% excise duty on unbranded golden ornaments and has increased import duty on gold by 2%.

-Gujarat has about 5000 shops/show rooms involved in gold jewellery business. Around three to five lakh people are involved in this business.

-The jewelers are expecting the Finance Minister to address their grievances and announce some relief in his budget reply speech on Tuesday in parliament.