PHD Chamber chief meets CM on biodiversity cess issue

Tribune News Service

Dehradun, July 26

PHD Chamber of Commerce and Industry president Dr Mahesh Gupta met Chief Minister Harish Rawat and took up the issue of the Biodiversity Board’s New Cess and other industry related problems with him in New Delhi on Tuesday.

Recently, the Uttarakhand Biodiversity Board had taken up the enactment of the biodiversity new cess.

The board has started sending notices to various industrial units for registration and submitting information and in lieu implementation of the Act for applying Cess flatly at 5 per cent on raw material and 0.5 per cent on turnover.

According to the PHD Chamber, clarifications are needed on this 0.5 to 5 per cent cess as there is ambiguity as to which industry should be covered under this Act for charging cess.

The PHD Chamber president appealed to the Chief Minister to review the applicability as well as percentage to be levied on a rational platform by assessing which industry should be charged how much since there are many industries which do not procure direct bio-resources as raw material and only add value through their manufacturing processes which is excluded under 2C of the Act.

If a flat cess is applied to all industries, this would impact the industry growth adversely and de-motivate the growth of industry and its sentiment in the state. As such, members of the PHD Chamber of Commerce of the Uttarakhand Chapter would be impacted and industry would suffer overall.

PHD Chamber of Commerce spokesperson Anil Taneja said the Chief Minister assured him of his personal intervention in this matter and promised to take up the required action to necessitate applicability of biodiversity cess as per industry use, element of damage, etc., and making a slab on the applicability of cess in accordance to industry usage. This will enable the growth of the state, its industry as well as create a healthy environment for ease of doing business benefitting the industry.