Industrial Policy & Trade Monitor· 2667 actions· ✨ 89 recent

Brazil's Foreign Trade Chamber executive committee (GECEX) issued Resolution No. 795 on 25 September 2025, published in the Diário Oficial da União on 26 September 2025, amending the "Lista de Autopeças Não Produzidas" (List of Non-Produced Auto Parts) under the Regime de Autopeças Não Produzidas established by Resolução Gecex nº 284/2021. The resolution removes two tariff-line exemptions (NCM 8501.53.10 Ex 017 and NCM 8507.60.00 Ex 042) and adds 78 new Ex-Tarifário lines covering hybrid/EV electric motors, lithium-ion battery-system components, ARLA32 supply systems, suspension and steering parts, transmission/differential components, electronic control units (ECUs), and body/structural panels — items for which Brazil certifies no equivalent domestic production exists, qualifying them for reduced import-duty treatment. Effective seven days after publication (3 October 2025), the newly added lines carry a defined two-year validity window through 30 September 2027 — the first time GECEX has attached a sunset date to auto-parts Ex-Tarifário grants, a procedural tightening relative to the open-ended grants issued under prior resolutions in this series.

On 20 September 2025 President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, in his capacity as Minister of Finance, Planning and Economic Development, gazetted the "Colombo Port City (Guidelines on the Grant of Exemptions or Incentives to Businesses of Strategic Importance) Regulations, No. 1 of 2025" in Extraordinary Gazette No. 2454/62 under the Colombo Port City Economic Commission Act, No. 11 of 2021. The new framework materially compresses the SEZ's headline tax-incentive envelope: Primary BSI awards fall from a 25-year full Inland Revenue Act exemption plus a 10-year half-rate follow-on to a single one-time exemption of up to 15 years, and Secondary BSIs lose the prior 25-year full-or-partial relief in favour of a concessionary 7.5% corporate-income-tax rate for four years from commercial operation. VAT exemption is not carried over into the new framework. The regulation is effective from publication, runs for five years, and supersedes Regulation No. 02 of 2023.

On 14 July 2025 President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, in his capacity as Minister of Finance, Planning and Economic Development, signed four gazette notifications designating IFC Colombo 1 (Private) Limited, Ceylon Real Estate Holdings (Private) Limited, Clothespin Management and Development (Private) Limited, and ICC Port City (Private) Limited as "Primary Businesses of Strategic Importance" inside the Colombo Port City Special Economic Zone, established under the Colombo Port City Economic Commission Act No. 21 of 2021. Cumulatively the four projects represent approximately USD 1.2 billion of inbound FDI commitments, with IFC Colombo 1 (a China Harbour Engineering Company / CHEC Port City Colombo subsidiary) alone committing USD 142.71 million and Ceylon Real Estate Holdings (a Browns Investments PLC subsidiary) committing a real-estate complex on 30,629.92 sqm. The original gazettes granted 35-year exemptions under the Inland Revenue Act (running to 13 July 2060) and ~25-year exemptions under the Value Added Tax Act, Finance Acts (Nos. 11 of 2002 and 5 of 2005), Excise (Special Provisions) Act, Customs Ordinance, Ports and Airports Development Levy Act and Sri Lanka Export Development Act, conditional on each designee executing its land-lease agreement with the Commission within six months of gazette publication.

Bangladesh's National Board of Revenue gazetted SRO 225-Ain/2025/48/Customs and SRO 226-Ain/2025/48/Customs on 29 May 2025, revising the minimum customs valuation (tariff-value) floors used to assess duty on a range of imported consumer and industrial goods, effective 2 June 2025. The amendment raised minimum import values for chocolate and cocoa-containing food preparations, removed the minimum-value floor for base oil used by petroleum processing/blending industries, and adjusted floors — mostly downward — for soap and other cleaning preparations and a handful of additional product lines. Minimum-value schemes set a customs-assessable price floor per unit regardless of the invoiced transaction value, so a higher floor functions as a de facto increase in the duty base (and hence landed cost) for under-invoicing-prone product categories, while a removed or lowered floor eases the duty base for the affected goods.

Sri Lanka Customs published the National Imports Tariff Guide (NITG) 2025 with operative effect from 1 January 2025, releasing the consolidated preamble and chapter schedules during March 2025. The NITG is Sri Lanka's annual canonical import-regime instrument: it codifies the Customs Import Duty (CID) schedule together with the four principal para-tariffs — Ports and Airports Development Levy (PAL) under Act No. 18 of 2011, Export Development Board (EDB) Cess under Act No. 40 of 1979, Special Commodity Levy (SCL) under Act No. 48 of 2007, and Excise (Special Provisions) Duty — alongside Value Added Tax and the Social Security Contribution Levy (SSCL). For 2025 the NITG carries forward the para-tariff rationalisation programme initiated under the IMF Extended Fund Facility (March 2023 – 2027), with the preamble's exemption lists for PAL, CESS, SCL and VAT serving as the operational rulebook for trading partners and importers across the entire HS schedule.

Sri Lanka's Economic Transformation Act, No. 45 of 2024, enacted by Parliament on 25 July 2024 and gazetted on 9 August 2024, is the foundational statutory rewrite of the country's post-default FDI and trade-policy architecture. The Act repeals the Board of Investment of Sri Lanka Law, No. 4 of 1978 (Section 194) and replaces the BOI with five new institutions: the Economic Commission of Sri Lanka (primary investment-approval and oversight body), Investment Zones Sri Lanka / Zones SL (SEZ management), the Office for International Trade (separating trade-policy from investment-policy functions), the National Productivity Commission, and the Sri Lanka Institute of Economics and International Trade (SLIEIT). The Act also codifies binding fiscal targets aligned with the IMF EFF conditionality — primary surplus of 2.3% of GDP by 2032, revenue exceeding 15% of GDP from 2027, debt-to-GDP below 95% by 2032, and GDP growth of at least 5% by 2027 — making it the parent statutory instrument under which subsequent FDI- incentive and tariff-reform sub-instruments operate.

Sri Lanka's Imports and Exports (Control) Regulations No. 07 of 2021, published as Gazette Extraordinary No. 2226/48 on 6 May 2021, banned the import of mineral and chemical fertilisers and placed agrochemicals (pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, rodenticides and plant-growth regulators) under a Special Import Licence requirement, applying to shipments with bills of lading issued on or after 6 May 2021. The measure operationalised the government's declared policy of converting Sri Lanka to fully organic agriculture. Facing a sharp drop in crop yields and food insecurity, the government repealed the restrictions from 30 November 2021.