Rationalisation of customs duties in the Budget on leather sector will help create more jobs and push exports, CLE said on Thursday.

The Council for Leather Exports (CLE) said that the Budget announcement of support for setting up working women hostels, establishing creches and women-specific skilling programmes will further enhance the women workforce in the sector.

The employment linked incentive scheme is a major support measure for the leather and footwear sector, as this is a labour-intensive sector, CLE Chairman Rajendra Kumar Jalan said.

“Two major measures have been announced for the leather and footwear sector in the Union Budget. One is the rationalisation of export duties on leathers and the other is the inclusion of more inputs including wet blue chrome tanned leather, wet white leather, crust leather and finished leather under the Duty Free Scheme for leather garments, leather products and footwear exporters,” he said.

Jalan added on the export duty front, the levy on wet blue and crust leather has been brought down from 40 per cent to 20 per cent.

This will facilitate the export of value-added processed leathers from the country as there is a huge demand for these leathers in the global market, he said.

“We hope that the government will further reduce this export duty for crust leathers from 20 per cent to nil in future, so as to achieve our objective of enhancing the export of value-added leathers by USD 1 billion in the next 2-3 years,” Jalan said.

He added that allowing duty free imports of critical raw materials and inputs, including wet blue, crust and finished leathers, will help facilitate the export of value-added products from the country.

“This will be a major step in realising our ambition of achieving the exporter target of USD 13.7 billion by 2029-30 by the leather and footwear sector, from the export value of USD 4.69 billion during 2023-24,” he said.