Punjab seeks slashing duty on Covid related items

Tribune News Service
New Delhi, May 25

Punjab Finance Minister Manpreet Badal on Tuesday called upon the Centre to have “GST with a heart” as he sought a much lower tax regime on goods required to battle Covid ahead of the meeting of the GST Council on Friday.

The stage is set for a vigorous discussion on the issue as the call to provide relief on Covid related items has also been endorsed by the finance ministers of West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Kerala.

The Fitment Committee of the GST Council has recommended against granting full exemption as that would result in increased cost of production of these goods. In this scenario, the opposition finance ministers may press for a token GST of 0.1 % on such items.

In a letter to Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, Badal also complained about leaving the decision making to bureaucrats during the period when the GST Council did not meet.

Pointing out that 50 pages of the meeting’s agenda contains decisions taken by officials – the GST Implementation Committee (GIC) – Badal complained that these have only been placed for information of state finance ministers and not for review.

Badal warned that if these decisions were not placed before the GST Council for its approval, Punjab would not be a party to the “dangerous precedent of subverting the process of law making to officers”.

The Punjab finance minister also pointed out that though the GST Council is being convened after eight months, the agenda is mundane and does not touch on issues of a structural nature such as appointing a vice-chair of the GST Council from the states and operationalising the Dispute Redressal Mechanism.

There is also no mechanism to place the suggestions of states as a part of the agenda of the GST Council meetings or even to formally acknowledge them.

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