Mumbai: Indian gems and jewellery Industry is extremely disappointed with the Union Government Budget Proposals as the finance ministry did not consider their plea of reducing the import duty component on gold and also abolish the stringent 80:20 norms.

“The union finance minister Mr. Arun Jaitley has ignored the plight of the trade in spite of several representation and meetings by the federation with the ministry highlighting the severe hardship faced by the industry due to restrictive policy measures of the government in last financial year”, said Mr. Haresh Soni, Chairman of All India Gems and Jewellery Trade Federation (GJF).

“We had high hopes from the new government to provide relief to the gems and jewellery industry since millions of workers were looking at the new government to address their sufferings due to job losses in the last several months”, Mr Soni said and added that “the GJF would continue to urge the Govt. against injustice meted out to the sector.’’

“The 80:20 rules were the biggest impediment for smooth operations of imports and development of premiums on gold as the export relation to imports had no relevance and had built a big parallel economy. Bringing down customs duty would have also eliminated smuggling and remove involvement of any black money. The entire industry was waiting for a positive turn of events but was let down by the government. For the last three years the sector has been bleeding due to stringent measures adopted by the government, we would urge the Govt. to end the ‘Gold Control Raj’ and rescue domestic Gems & Jewellery Trade from parallel economy and black marketing, by abolishing 80.20 rule and reducing import duty on gold” Mr. Soni added.