New Delhi: The US Generalised System of Preferences (GSP) gave India tariff advantage of only 190 million dollars while India’s exports to the United States totaled 50.57 billion dollars in 2017, the Federation of Indian Export Organisations (FIEO) said on Tuesday.
“The tariff advantage was less than 0.4 percent of our exports. Naturally, its withdrawal will have a marginal impact,” said FIEO President Ganesh Kumar Gupta.
The GSP was given on a non-reciprocal basis, he said. Yet, the United States linked it with market access and tariff reduction, which is against the basic tenets of GSP.
Gupta said that since India predominantly exports intermediate and semi-manufactured goods to the United States, the GSP helped in cost-effectiveness and price competitiveness of the US downstream industry. Hence its withdrawal will impact the competitiveness of many manufacturing sectors and hit US consumers.
The import price of most chemicals products, which constituted a large chunk of India’s exports, is expected to increase by about 5 percent. “The withdrawal of GSP benefit will also hit import diversification strategy of the United States when it is keen to replace China as its main supplier.”
Gupta said India was getting tariff preference on 5,111 tariff lines out of 18,770 tariff lines in the United States. However, the tariff advantage was 4 percent or more on only 2,165 tariff lines.
[source_without_link]ANI[/source_without_link]