India on Saturday strongly opposed imposition of carbon tax as an additional source of funding to fight climate change. 

"India believes that some of the measures like carbon export optimisation tax and levy on CDM/offsets violate the principles of the Convention (UNFCCC) as their incidence falls entirely on developing countries and these cannot be recognised as a source of new and additional finance for climate change," Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee said here. 

He was making an intervention at the G20 Finance Ministers' and Central Bank Governors' meeting on Development, Climate and Innovative Financing. 

He said global levies on carbon emissions from shipping and aviation should be raised only if a mechanism for refund of revenues collected from developing countries in put in place. 

The refund should not be treated as climate change finance flow or a contribution of developing countries to global revenue mobilisation envisaged under the UNFCCC, he said. 

"We also feel that the flow of finance leveraged by international finance institutions (IFIs) or the multilateral development banks (MDBs) should be counted towards the overall target only if there is a net additional infusion of capital by the developed countries to the capital base of the MDBs/IFIs," he said. 

Mukherjee said the grant or concessional portion of the loans advanced by MDBs on the basis of such new capital only should be counted as new and additional finance for climate change. (Economic Times)