New Delhi: Finance Ministe P. Chidambaram today announced that services provided by Cord Blood Banks will be considered as part of health care services and they shall be exempt from service tax.
Presenting the interim budget in Parliament, Chidambaram proposed to exempt loading, unloading, packing, storage and warehousing of rice from service tax.
He said, by virtue of the definition of ‘agricultural produce' in Finance Act, 2012, read with the Negative List, storage or warehousing of Paddy was excluded from the levy of service tax; but rice was not.
As this distinction was somewhat artificial, the same has been done away with and now rice has also been exempted.
Notifications in respect of the above changes will be issued today itself.
