Khadi and Village Industries Commission (KVIC) on Sunday welcomed the government's decision to put restrictions on imports of agarbatti and other similar products amid reports of significant increase in inbound shipments from countries like China and Vietnam.

KVIC Chairman Vinai Kumar Saxena had raised the issue during his meetings with Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal and MSME Minister Nitin Gadkari on August 29. Union MSME Minister Nitin Gadkari also shown his concern about heavy   imports of these products.

"Import policy of agarbatti and other odoriferous preparations which operate by burning...Is revised from free to restricted," the Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) said in a notification on Saturday. Importers of restricted category goods require licence from the government for import purpose.

 "I was shocked to see that in 2016-17, we had established 2,831 projects of agarbatti making with the disbursement Rs 10.06 crore as margin money and created 22,648 direct employment in this field. Sadly, in 2017-18 and 2018-19, we could establish only 279 and 397 units respectively - which has created a heavy loss in employment in the agarbatti-making industry," Saxena said.

In a statement, KVIC quoted responses of agarbatti manufacturers supporting the government's move.

Subhash Bhatia, who heads the Raw Agarbatti Manufacturers' Association (RAMA), said the price of raw agarbatti available to the local perfumers, that had gone down from Rs 70/kg in 2009 to Rs 48/kg in 2018, has been up by at least Rs 5/kg in less than a day of this notification. It will create not less than 20 lakh jobs in some months.

Bhatia, who hails from Jabalpur and heads the Raw Agarbatti Manufacturers' Association (RAMA) - an organisation who had been struggling from many years for putting Agarbatti and other items in the restricted category, says, "The effect of this boon from the Narendra Modi government has already started reflecting. The price of Raw Agarbatti available to the local perfumers that had gone down from Rs 70/kg in 2009 to Rs 48/kg in 2018, has been up by at least Rs 5/kg, in less than a day of this notification. It will create not less than 20 lakh jobs in some months now."

Corroborating similar views, Bikram Singh Deka of Guwahati (Assam) and Bhavik Sah of Ahmedabad (Gujarat) said that the recent amendment of import policy of agarbatti and other odoriferous preparations would not only pave way for village industry units involved in agarbatti-making but would also check the import dependency of Indian perfumers to a significant level.

Saxena further said that KVIC would establish at least 50,000 Prime Minister Employment Generation Programme (PMEGP) units of agarbatti-making across the nation in the present fiscal.               

Expressing their gratitude for Khadi and Village Industries Commission (KVIC), they said unanimously: "It was the Herculean effort of KVIC Chairman that brought ray of hopes for Indian Agarbatti-makers, otherwise such amendment was a mirage for us."

Imports of agarbatti and other odoriferous preparations stood at USD 17.75 million (about Rs 125 crore) during April-June 2019-20. It was USD 83.58 million (about Rs 585 crore) in 2018-19 as against USD 84.95 million (about Rs 595 crore) in the previous fiscal.

Agarbatti imports from China dipped to USD 6.39 million in 2018-19 from USD 8.53 million in the previous fiscal.