The government will raise the basic customs duty on solar modules to 40% in a year, after initially levying 20%-25% from August, Power and Renewable Energy Minister R.K. Singh said.
For solar cells, the customs duty will start with a 15% levy this August, and will be raised to 30% Singh told reporters.
The move will be a big blow for China, which supplies 85%-90% of equipment used in the rapidly expanding solar energy sector in the country. The minister said anything that is imported will be thoroughly checked for malware.
“We should not be importing any equipment if we have sufficient domestic capacity available,” the union minister said.
Speaking at an online press conference, Singh also dismissed any concerns about India’s ability to achieve the 175 GW renewable energy capacity by 2022. Citing a recent 2 GW SECI bid that was oversubscribed by nearly 2.5 GW, Singh said that the progress is healthy. “We will meet our targets by 2022. There is absolutely no concern about that,” he said.
The power and renewable energy minister also said that by 2030, he expects the share of established non-fossil energy generators to overcome the traditional thermal generators. Currently in 2020, non-conventional power generation capacity has a share of 37%.
