Govt plans tariffs on EV cells to curb Chinese imports
INDIGENOUS PUSH Local manufacturing of li-ion cells to get incentive boost
NEWDELHI: India plans to impose tariffs on imports of lithium-ion cell for as long as a decade and alongside offer incentives to boost local manufacturing as part of a broader effort to scale down trade ties with China, two people aware of the developments said.
Tensions along the IndiaChina border have prompted India to use its fast-growing market as a lever to pressure Beijing to back off. India’s plans involve imposing tariff and nontariff barriers to check Chinese imports. The idea is to avoid repeating what happened with solar equipment manufacturing, where China leveraged its first-mover advantage to capture the market.
Lithium cells are the building blocks of rechargeable batteries for electric vehicles, laptops and mobile phones. Lithium-based battery storage also caters to other consumer electronics industry and electricity grids, given the intermittent nature of electricity from clean energy sources such as solar and wind.
“The Indian government has taken note of China’s dominance in this space and there are geopolitical reasons as well behind devising such an incentive scheme for lithium cells,” said one of t he people cit ed above requesting anonymity.
The government plans to offer incentives such as 100% tax deduction of capital expenditure in the first year of operation under Section 35 AD, concessional financing options by giving companies deemed infrastructure status and waiver of minimum alternative tax.
There may also be an outputlinked cash subsidy based on kilowatt hours (KWH) of cells sold. The ministry of heavy industry has been working on this proposal along with the federal policy t hink- t ank Niti Aayog.
“Till March, the ministries and Niti Aayog were working on the proposal. The Covid-19 pandemic though can delay introduction of the scheme,” said the second person cited above, also seeking anonymity.
According to the contours of the energy security plan, India plans to issue expression of i nterest ( Eois) t o s hortlist around five companies for setting up Tesla-style gigafactories for cell and battery manufacturing—each having a 5-to-10 gigawatt hours (GWH) capacity.
To put this into perspective, each GWH of battery capacity is sufficient to power a million homes or around 30,000 electric cars for an hour.
Globally, lithium-ion cell manufacturing is dominated by China, followed by the US, Thailand, Germany, Sweden and South Korea. The value chain comprises raw material processing, and manufacturing of separators, cathodes, electrolyte, anode, cell and finally the battery storage packs.
With India only manufacturing battery storage packs and relying on Chinese imports for the rest, the aim is to become self-sufficient across the value chain by 2025. Mint reported about the proposed manufacturing plan on 26 July last year.
India has already imposed basic customs duty on solar cells CHK, modules and inverters, which is to be followed by a plan to impose import duty on wafers and ingots that go into the manufacturing of such cells and modules. Along with leveraging its growing market to prepare an economic retaliation package against China, India also wants to play a larger role in global supply chains.
NEWDELHI: The Indian online grocery market could exceed sales of $3 billion (about ₹22,500 crore) in 2020, a substantial 76% jump over the previous year, Spencer's Retail chairman Sanjiv Goenka said.
The preference for online delivery of products became more visible following the Covid-19 outbreak, he added. Spencer's Retail, part of the Rp-sanjiv Goenka (RPSG) Group, had acquired online supermarket and grocery store Nature's Basket in July 2019.
Consumers opted to buy essentials and other products from home in a bigger way than they had done in the past, he said.
"The result is that India's online grocery market could exceed $3 billion in sales in 2020, a substantial 76% increase over the previous year f oll owing a demand spike for the home delivery of fresh produce," Goenka said in his address to shareholders in the company's Annual Report for 2019-20.
With increased access to smartphones and low data costs, shoppers now prefer an omnichannel shopping experience, he added.
Spencers Retail is attractively positioned to capitalise on the omni-channel opportunity, he said. "The company did not just respond to this sectoral inflection point with a relevant mobile application and home delivery; it invested in enhancing proximity to consumers through phone callbased delivery, Chatbots and Whatsapp-driven product delivery using its stores as hubs," Goenka said.
Besides, the retail chain collaborated with Uber and other delivery partners for product supply, strengthening its lastmile capability.