Intervening to support a falling rupee, the government on Wednesday increased the import taxes (basic customs duty) on 19 items ranging from white goods, gold jewellery and aviation turbine fuel to footwear and certain plastic items by 2.5 to 10 percentage points. The move covering goods whose aggregate imports last fiscal were `86,000 crore could jack up the prices of these goods in the domestic market and make air travel costlier.
While many of these items like air conditioners and refrigerators saw a reduction in the goods and service tax (GST) rates recently, domestic manufactures could now use reduced competition from imports to hike prices, analysts said.