Lower BCD, GST for Green Hydrogen and Battery Storage: Recommends Sumant Sinha to FM Sitharaman

Initially, the Government should keep the lower rates of the Basic Customs Duty (BCD) and the Goods and Services Tax (GST) for both the green hydrogen and the battery storage industries as they will need time to set up, suggested Sumant Sinha, Chairman and CEO of India’s renewables major ReNew Power, to the Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman.

Sumant Sinha recommended to Finance Minister that “for both (Green Hydrogen and Battery Storage), of course, there are PLI schemes as well, but both of those will take 3 or 4 years before they actually come in. So until that point, our recommendation is to keep BCD and GST down for those areas.”

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in her post-Budget interaction with industry body ASSOCHAM discussed a range of issues confronting different sectors of the economy including renewable energy, steel, airline, textile, cotton among others.

During his interaction with FM Sitharaman, Sumant Sinha, who is also the Sr. Vice President of ASSOCHAM, termed the Budget 2022 as path-breaking and said, “this budget has been a green budget almost like no other budget before it.”

“The boldest step is allocating Rs 19,500 crore for the solar PLI scheme ...I think it will really position India as a great alternative manufacturing destination to China,” he added.

He further said, “And there are things, of course, that can happen outside of the Budget as well.”

Besides, Sinha also strongly put the case for creating a domestic carbon market and said, “I would suggest is maybe the creation of a domestic carbon market, because if we really want to move forward on penalizing corporates and the people who consume carbon, then I think it would be really good to have a price on carbon, which can then be used to essentially make sure that carbon-based consumptions, especially of things like diesel consumption, can come down. And we start then actually creating the generation of carbon credits as well, which can also then be sold to a fee. So I think that is something that the government might consider.”

The apex chamber complimented Finance Minister for a budget that would have a great multiplier impact on investment being led by an unprecedented increase in the capital expenditure by the government.

Responding to ASSOCHAM concerns on the dumping of ferrous and non-ferrous metals, Nirmala Sitharaman said, while the steel industry has to align the domestic prices with the international trends, the interests of MSME user industries have also to be kept in mind.

She said “we don’t want dumping but we also want prices at reasonable levels. Now that the economy is recovering, the industry wants cheap raw materials. This request has especially come in from MSMEs, and we have to keep that in mind before raising anti-dumping duties.”