Silver imports restricted; licence now must for select categories

New Delhi: The government on Saturday imposed restrictions on imports of certain kinds of silver, days after it increased customs duty on the precious metal to 15% from 6%, as part of measures to preserve precious foreign exchange and contain the country's rising import bill amid the ongoing conflict in West Asia.

The Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) amended the import policy for certain forms of silver including bars containing 99.9% or more by weight of the precious metal to "restricted" from "free" earlier, implying that their imports will now require a licence.

The government had increased customs duty on gold and silver imports to 10% from 5%, and agriculture infrastructure and development cess to 5% from 1%, taking the total effective import duty to 15% with effect from May 13.


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"The import policy of items covered... are revised from 'free' to 'restricted'," the DGFT said in a notification. India imported $4.24 billion of semi-manufactured silver in FY25.

Price Up 12% Since April

Of this, almost half came from the UK. Hong Kong and Australia were the next two sources of import. Silver prices have risen almost 12% since April 1. India's silver imports surged 157.16% year-on-year to $411 million in April. Overall merchandise imports went up 10% on-year to $71.94 billion during the month.

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"This was required as import duty has been raised to 15% and since these two codes were free to import, there was a chance of getting these under various free trade agreements at lesser duty," said an industry representative, who did not wish to be identified.