Off-grid solar industry bracing for impact of import duty hike for lanterns and inverters
With a goal of promoting local manufacturing, India’s new budget tripled to 15 per cent the duty on imported solar lanterns, while the duty on solar inverters would rise from 5 per cent to 20 per cent. The off-grid solar industry, which already saw a 10 per cent decline in solar lantern sales in 2019-2020, is bracing for an ever bigger hit because of the new tariffs.
As a result, off-grid industry executives are calling for a more measured approach that accounts for the current gap in quality local production while ensuring that India’s rural poor are protected from expected price hikes until that gap is filled.
“We understand that the increase in duties has the undesirable effect of making certain products in the market expensive for end-customers,” said Piyush Mathur, board member of CLEAN, a trade group representing over 200 distributed renewable energy companies. “However, the new duty structure also offers our member companies an opportunity to build and scale their local manufacturing to a globally competitive standard.”
Viewed in isolation, Mathur said, the new customs duty “appears to run against the national imperative to accelerate clean energy adoption
