Days after duty hike, govt restricts import of silver

Days after raising customs duty on gold, silver and other precious metals, the government on Saturday imposed curbs on the import of silver by placing the precious metal under a licensed regime for inbound shipments. The Ministry of Commerce issued a related notification on the matter.

To prevent forex outflows, the government had on May 13 raised import duty on gold and silver from 6 per cent to 15 per cent. The idea was to discourage non-essential imports of these metals.

The Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) said, “Import policy for silver, including silver plated with gold and platinum, is revised from free to restricted.” The orders are effective immediately and, simply put, mean that silver imports will now require government clearance.

The notification, however, conditionally exempts imports by 100 per cent export oriented units (EOUs) and special economic zone (SEZ) units, provided such imported goods are not sold in the domestic market.

“Silver imports rose over two-fold to $411 million during April. In 2025-26, silver imports rose about 150 per cent to $12 billion due to higher prices. In volume terms, silver imports rose by 42 per cent to 7,334.96 tonnes in the last fiscal,” Commerce Ministry statistics said.

Sources said India’s foreign exchange reserves had slipped to $690 billion in the week ending May 1. These had soared to a record high of $728.49 billion during the week ending February 27. The West Asia war, which began on February 28, has exerted pressure on the Indian rupee in terms of costlier imports.