The Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC) on Thursday eased the condition for local producers to avail of the concessional 1% excise duty rate on ‘made in India’ phones by clarifying that this benefit can be claimed even if duty-exempt components are used in production.The original condition for claiming the concessional 1% duty against the otherwise applicable 12.5% excise duty was that the producer should not have claimed any credit for the taxes paid on inputs or capital goods used in the production. This, however, has led to the interpretation that locally made mobile handsets would be denied this benefit if any duty-exempt input goes into production.