India's Plan to Exempt Customs Duties on 25 Critical Minerals

[Sapna Mukherjee]

The Indian government has proposed a complete exemption of customs duties on 25 critical minerals, including rare earth metals, and a reduction in the basic customs duty (BCD) on two of them. The proposal aims to set the customs duty at zero for key minerals such as copper, gallium, germanium, hafnium, indium, lithium, molybdenum, niobium, nickel, potash, rare earth elements (REE), rhenium, strontium, tantalum, tellurium, tin, tungsten, vanadium, zirconium, selenium, cadmium, and silicon (excluding quartz and silicon dioxide). Currently, the customs duty on these 25 minerals ranges from 5% to 7.5%.