Piyush Goyal.
Credit: PTI Photo
New Delhi: Union Minister of Commerce and Industry Piyush Goyal on Friday said the government would ensure the benefit of the substantial reductions in Goods & Services Tax (GST) rates are passed on to the consumers.
Claiming that industries have already given assurance in this regard, Goyal said state governments should also keep a watch that the GST reforms are passed on.
"Together we must ensure and keep watch—while the government will certainly do this work, media colleagues should also ensure that the full benefit of the GST rate cuts reaches the consumers, " Goyal told media persons at the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) headquarters here.
In the coming days, the new GST structure would lead to an increase in demand, and the prices of a wide range of consumer goods would go down after September 22, he said.
Goyal also drew a sharp contrast with the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) era, claiming that state governments back then lacked trust in the central government over compensation assurances tied to the rollout of a unified indirect tax.
Under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the government had the courage to decide that after the introduction of GST, if the revenue of any State dipped, or revenue growth was less than 14%, the Union government would compensate it for the first five years.
Insisting that GST rationalisation had nothing to do with the US' decision to impose 50% tariff on Indian goods, Goyal said it was the outcome of about a year-long consultation among the stakeholders.
He also said the Union government’s decisions were not guided by any election.
Atal-ji (the late former PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee) had imagined a single tax. All 30-35 different types of taxes, duties and levies should be combined to form a single tax. Atal-ji did not get elected in 2004, he said.
"Before 2014, during the Congress governments, the burden on consumers and traders—whether of taxes or paperwork—kept increasing, but after GST was implemented in 2017, it continuously reduced. Today, India’s economy is in such a strong position that bank interest rates have come down, inflation has dropped sharply, and the growth rate has reached, " Goyal said.