Government relaxes norms for diesel import through old ships

NEW DELHI: The government has relaxed norms for import of high-speed diesel and light diesel oil through old ships and vessels that are coming to India for the purpose of breaking.

"Import of High Speed Diesel and Light diesel oil, brought on board in the old ships / vessels for purpose of breaking, and which are incidental to such ships / vessels, is free," the Directorate General of Foreign Trade said in a notification.

Earlier such imports were allowed through state trading enterprises.

According to an official, the move would give a boost to the ship breaking industry. Alang in Gujarat is the Asia's largest ship breaking yard.

In a separate public notice, DGFT said that the manufacturer or the exporter of drug formulations will have to print the barcodes as per global standard at different packaging levels to facilitate tracking and tracing of their products.

The government has extended the deadline again to affix barcodes on primary level packaging by pharmaceutical companies till further orders.

A barcode is an optical machine-readable representation of data on the product it is attached to and facilitates its tracing and tracking.