The government officials are busy scrutinising import of some of the high end costly bikes that were imported for “research and development” purpose. A two-wheeler company imported high end bikes with their purpose marked as “for research and development”. R&D imports give a benefit of 100 percent duty exemption to the importer whereas actual imported bikes attract 100 percent duty of the invoice value.
“If you want to import a bike into India, the duty for it stands at over 100 per cent. Hence, some under-value the bike or bring them under the guise of research and development which gives them 100 per cent duty exemption,” a top official of the Customs Department said.
Sources report that a number of bikes have been imported in India and have been declared undervalued for research and development purposes. Shipment of 50 such bikes is under the customs’ scanner which were reported to evade a duty of nearly Rs. 50 lakh. Most of the bikes that have been imported are the 200cc bikes which were declared under-valued. The differential value was found to be more than Rs. 1 lakh per bike, reported a senior custom’s official.
