GST Council may finalise e-way rules today

GST Council may finalise e-way rules today

GST provision requires goods more than Rs 50,000 to be pre-registered online before it can be moved

The Goods and Services Tax (GST) Council is likely to lower tax rate on Saturday on job works making fabric to garments to 5 per cent and put in place a mechanism for online registration of goods above a certain value before they can be transported. The Council, headed by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, will also review at its meeting the implementation of the GST regime since July 1 and may finalise a mechanism to operationalise anti-profiteering provision to protect consumer interest.

Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC) Chairperson Vanaja Sarna said the movement of goods between states has smoothened with 25 out of 29 states abolishing check posts.

"About 25 states have removed those check posts. So far, it has been going all right," she told PTI.

This would further smoothen after e-way bill in GST that requires any goods more than Rs 50,000 in value to be pre- registered online before it can be moved is implemented.

"As the e-way bill process for the whole of India gets panned out, we should be able to do something which will be better," Sarna said.

She, however, declined to comment on whether the threshold in the e-way bill will be retained at Rs 50,000 amid demands from various quarters to raise it.

Officials said rules for the e-way bill will be decided tomorrow. This GST provision requires any goods more than Rs 50,000 in value to be pre-registered online before it can be moved.

As per the draft provision, GST Network (GSTN) would generate e-way bills that will be valid for 1-20 days, depending on distance to be travelled -- one day for 100 km, 3 days (100 to less than 300 km), 5 days (300-less than 500 km) and 10 days (500- less than 1,000 km).

The information technology platform for the e-way bill system is being developed by the National Informatics Centre.

Earlier this week, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had said it would be mandatory for manufacturers to pass on benefits of reduction in taxes post GST to consumers.

"What if input tax benefit is not transferred to consumers? ...We are meeting a few days from now... In a short while, we are going to finalise the entire mechanism as far as anti-profiteering is concerned," he had said in Parliament.

The Council is also likely to tomorrow consider lowering of tax rates for job works for making garments to 5 per cent from 18 per cent, an official said.

Currently, services by way of job work in relation to textile yarns — other than man-made fibre/filament — and textile fabrics attract 5 per cent GST. Other job works in relation to garments attract an 18 per cent levy.

The official said the Council may look at streamlining it and bring all job works, including for making garments from fabric, under the 5 per cent slab.

Apart from reviewing the rollout of the GST regime, the 19th meeting of the Council may on Saturday take a look at streamlining the anomalies raised by the industry over the past one month, said an official, who did not want to be named.

It will be the first full-fledged meeting of the GST Council, also comprising representatives of all the 29 states, after the rollout of the new indirect tax reform on July 1.

The Council had on July 17 discussed, via video conferencing, hiking cess on cigarettes as there was some anomaly in the rate fixed earlier.

After the July 1 rollout, the textile sector had protested, demanding a rollback of 5 per cent GST on fabrics.

Jaitley, however, had ruled out cutting tax rates for the textiles sector, saying a zero per cent GST on fabrics will break the input tax credit chain for the domestic industry and make imported items cheaper.

According to the rates decided by the Council, in the textiles category, silk and jute fibre have been exempted, while cotton and natural fibre and all kinds of yarns will be levied a 5 per cent GST. Man-made fibre and yarn will, however, attract an 18 per cent tax rate.

All categories of fabric attract a 5 per cent rate. Man- made apparel up to Rs 1,000 will attract a 5 per cent tax and those above Rs 1,000 will attract 12 per cent.

Business Standard, New Delhi, 05 August 2017

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

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...

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

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...

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

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 ...

CA Online

Search This Blog