In a bid to boost commodities trading, govt exempts 38 agri items from CTT

New Delhi: Government has exempted 38 more agriculture items from the ambit of the Commodity Transaction Tax (CTT), which was imposed in July 2013.  The CTT at 0.01 percent was levied on non-agricultural commodities, including gold and silver, and some processed food items such as sugar and edible oils. The Centre had exempted 23 agri-commodities, including wheat, barley, chana, cotton and potato, from the CTT. The tax is levied on futures trading, not on spot trading in the commodities and is paid by the seller. In a notification, dated 10 February the Finance Ministry has amended the CTT rules to add 38 more agriculture items in the list of exempted products. The farm items that have been added in the list includes rice or paddy, rice bran, tur, tur dal, urad, urad dal, mung, mung dal, masur, gram dal, gram husk, onion, bajra, jowar, ginger, sesamum, small millets, groundnut, methi, ragi, betelnuts, cinnamon, nutmeg, clove, linseed, and sunflower seed, among other commodities. The ministry has expanded the exemption list a fortnight before the presentation of Union Budget. The turnover of the commodity exchanges has fallen by over 42 percent to Rs 51.26 lakh crore during April-January period of this fiscal, according to the data by the Forward Markets Commission. At present, four national and six regional level commodity exchanges operate in the country. PTI