Skip to main content

Long gap between GST panel meetings

By
With the Centre’s biggest proposed legislative reform, goods and services tax ( GST), roll- out well past the deadline of April 2016, things might have slowed down at state level, too. The empowered committee of state finance ministers has not met to discuss the legislation for five months now.

West Bengal Finance Minister Amit Mitra was elected chairman of the empowered committee in February, after former chairman K M Mani stepped down as Kerala finance minister on graft charges. Mitra is yet to call a meeting.

This is significant, considering the Narendra Modi government is seen escalating efforts for the passage of the constitutional amendment Bill towards the unified indirect tax legislation.

The Union government is making all efforts to enable the GST roll- out, including pushing for passage of constitutional amendment Bill in the Rajya Sabha during the ongoing Budget session.

The Lok Sabha has already passed the Bill, stalled in the other House for want of majority support. After the passage, Bills of the GST itself would come before Parliament and state Assemblies. Rules will, then, be framed. The empowered committee needs to discuss key issues on the proposed rules. The empowered committee met in February to elect the chairman, but Mitra himself did not attend for health reasons.

In the earlier meeting in November 2015, Delhi Finance Minister Manish Sisodia was selected to chair a meeting for a day. It had decided on a subpanel to decide on the issue of a threshold, as states were divided on whether GST should kick in from ? 10 lakh or ? 25 lakh of annual turnover.

The next round was to take place in December 2015, but it did not happen. The committee was to draft a GST law and business processes for payments, refunds and returns filing.

The Constitution amendment Bill could not be cleared in the previous session of Parliament, too.

Congress has been demanding acap of GST rate at 18 per cent in the Bill, but has met with stiff opposition from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party as it will curb the flexibility of the proposed GST Council to change rates when needed.

Business Standard, New Delhi, 28 April 2016

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Household debt up, but India still lags emerging-market economies: RBI

By
  Although household debt in India is rising, driven by increased borrowing from the financial sector, it remains lower than in other emerging-market economies (EMEs), the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) said in its Financial Stability Report. It added that non-housing retail loans, largely taken for consumption, accounted for 55 per cent of total household debt.As of December 2024, India’s household debt-to-gross domestic product ratio stood at 41.9 per cent. “...Non-housing retail loans, which are mostly used for consumption purposes, formed 54.9 per cent of total household debt as of March 2025 and 25.7 per cent of disposable income as of March 2024. Moreover, the share of these loans has been growing consistently over the years, and their growth has outpaced that of both housing loans and agriculture and business loans,” the RBI said in its report.Housing loans, by contrast, made up 29 per cent of household debt, and their growth has remained steady. However, disaggregated data sho...
Post a Comment
Read more

External spillovers likely to hit India's financial system: RBI report

By
  While India’s growth remains insulated from global headwinds mainly due to buoyant domestic demand, the domestic financial system could, however, be impacted by external spillovers, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) said in its half yearly Financial Stability Report published on Monday.Furthermore, the rising global trade disputes and intensifying geopolitical hostilities could negatively impact the domestic growth outlook and reduce the demand for bank credit, which has decelerated sharply. “Moreover, it could also lead to increased risk aversion among investors and further corrections in domestic equity markets, which despite the recent correction, remain at the high end of their historical range,” the report said.It noted that there is some build-up of stress, primarily in financial markets, on account of global spillovers, which is reflected in the marginal rise in the financial system stress indicator, an indicator of the stress level in the financial system, compared to its p...
Post a Comment
Read more

Retail inflation cools to a six-year low of 2.82% in May on moderating food prices

By
  New Delhi: Retail inflation in India cooled to its lowest level in over six years in May, helped by a sharp moderation in food prices, according to provisional government data released Thursday.Consumer Price Index (CPI)-based inflation eased to 2.82% year-on-year, down from 3.16% in April and 4.8% in May last year, data from the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) showed. This marks the fourth consecutive month of sub-4% inflation, the longest such streak in at least five years.The data comes just days after the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) Monetary Policy Committee cut the repo rate by 50 basis points to 5.5%, its third straight cut and a cumulative reduction of 100 basis points since the easing cycle began in February. The move signals a possible pivot from inflation control to supporting growth.Food inflation came in at just 0.99% in May, down from 1.78% in April and a sharp decline from 8.69% a year ago.A Mint poll of 15 economists had projected CPI ...
Post a Comment
Read more