The GST Council reduced the job work rate in the textiles sector to 5 per cent from 18 per cent with the finance minister Arun Jaitley appealing to businesses to pass on the benefits of the tax reform measure.
The reduction in such rate of job work will be applicable across the entire textile chain and takes care of the concerns of the industry which has been pushing for reducing the rate for any job work linked to knitting, dyeing, embroidery, printing, washing, stitching, ironing and others.
The council, in its 20th meeting in New Delhi, also approved the e-way bill rules to ensure seamless movement of goods. The rules specify pre-registration of all goods worth over Rs 50,000 before they are moved for sale beyond 10km. It will not be applicable for exempted goods and the unified e-way rules are likely to be in place by October one.
This will help end inspector raj as the process would largely be driven by technology. “The Council decided to implement e-way bill across the country…. There will be no check posts and the entire process will be technology driven,” Jaitley said after the meeting of the panel.
He said new registrations under GST has gone up to 15.67 lakh and 71 lakh state and central taxpayers have migrated to the new system. He said the figures were satisfactory. The increase in the new registrations comes as a boost for the government which had been eyeing a widening of the tax base. The GST Council also lowered the rate on some tractor parts to 18 per cent from 28 per cent. The council is also likely to examine whether contracts linked to irrigation can be bought down to 5 per cent. Jaitley said the council discussed the anti-profiteering issue and would launch a campaign on it to inform the consumer about the impact of GST.
“Some industries are not giving benefit of input tax credit. We want market mechanism to compel them to pass on the benefit,” the finance minister said. As a first, state-level screening committees will be set up along with a panel at the Centre and Jaitley said it would act as a “deterrent”.
The next meet of the council will be on September nine. “As expected, the e-way bill rules have been approved, though the date from when they will become effective has not been announced, according to official sources.
– Apparel and Textile News, Apparel Talk, Indian Apparel
