Can We Defer and Avoid Customs Duties While Importing Goods to India?

As an importer, it is natural to feel anxious about the many taxes, fees, and customs duties that are a part and parcel of bringing goods in from another country to India or vice-versa. These are the taxes and fees that have a huge impact on the overall earnings and revenues of the businesses and a lot of merchants find these absolutely unbearable.

But do you know there are ways through which you can easily avoid and defer taxes and duties when importing goods in India? Don’t worry, we are not telling you to use unfair means – it’s all legal and moreover, a business model that businesses utilize. You can use Free Trade Zones (FTZs) for importing goods without worrying about upfront payment of customs duties and taxes.

In India, free trade zones are designated areas where merchants may import and store goods without having to pay duties and taxes, immediately. You may store, import, handle, reconfigure, repack, and re-export goods without inviting usual taxes and customs duties when making use of these zones for importing. The duty is fully exempted on all imports into the free trade warehousing zones (FTWZ) in Delhi NCR, Chennai, Mumbai, Gujarat, and other places in India. The customs duty comes into effect only when you move the goods out of the free trade zones for selling into the local markets inside the country where they are imported.

Furthermore, when you use the FTWZ in Delhi NCR, Mumbai, Chennai, Gujarat, and other cities of India for importing goods, you can defer customs duties and taxes on imported goods (raw or finished) as long as the items are stored inside these zones. If we compare the scenario with bonded warehousing, you can store your cargo for 3 years without any solvency certificates and triple duty bond which in the case of CBW is mandatory.

The customs duty also does not apply to re-exports when you use India’s free trade zones for importing and storing goods. As a top-rated provider of world-class, hygienic, safe, and secure FTWZs in Delhi NCR, Chennai, Mumbai, and Gujarat, OSV offers complete warehousing and storage solutions to merchants of all types – from textiles importers to packaged food, medicines, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, furniture, and other products. The temperature-controlled and cold storage facilities are excellent for storing food, medicines, and other temperature-sensitive items.

To conclude, using OSV’s free trade zones not only helps you defer taxes and customs duties. At the same time, you easily avoid tedious processes that are a part of importing goods directly into a country. For more information about how to defer customs duties and taxes when importing goods to India, please feel free to talk to the experts at OSV.