New Delhi: In a bid to give a massive push to exports, Government will phase out around 29 cesses, mostly levied on farm products, in the coming months as they affect competitiveness of Indian products abroad.

Definition of "manufacturing" while giving tax concessions will be uniform for all exports across the board.

"We have accepted in-principle that taxes and duties should not be exported. Taxes are levied through acts of Parliament, so rules and procedures will be followed to make the required changes," Director General of Foreign Trade G K Pillai said in New Delhi.

He said there were individual items for which the Commerce Ministry was "fighting for" to ensure their exports are exempted from tax.

"The conclusion we have arrived at is that incidental levies have to be removed, transaction costs reduced and gradually cesses have to be done away with," he said.

Addressing an open house on foreign trade policy, organised by Chemexcil, he said these cesses included the one levied by the Agricultural and Processed Foods Export Development Authority (APEDA). Traders said it was anachronistic that cesses were still levied on export of commodities like tea, coffee, basmati, spices and menthol.

Pillai said the Foreign Trade Policy (FTP) announced was in nearly full concurrence with the Finance Ministry and therefore, tariff concessions declared therein will be implemented by the Department of Revenue.