Union Minister of State for Finance and Corporate Affairs, Arjun Ram Meghwal, said that India’s growth rate would increase by year-end .
“The GDP growth rates will increase by end of the year”, he told The Hindu in response to a question on the apprehensions expressed on this front since the tabling of the second volume of the Economic Survey in Parliament on Friday. He was in the city to address the members of the MCCI and the ICC- two chambers of commerce.
He indicated that the Centre was open to taking a relook at the GST tax slabs in tandem with revenue buoyancy . “The government has an open mind on this.. it may look at bringing down the tax slabs”, he said. The Goods and Services Tax regime has five tax slabs which includes an exempted category (0 % rate) and four others with rates of 5%, 12%, 18% and 28%.
Pointing out that the Centre’s aim was to simplify the tax structures through GST by bringing all States on board, he said “previously there was a Union list, a State list and a Concurrent list. But with GST there will be uniformity in terms of taxation. We could have taken decisions in the GST council on the basis of a majority but that was not done, as we wanted to bring the States on board,” he said.
He said that West Bengal has seen the highest number of new dealer registrations with 56,000 dealers registering on the GSTNetwork GSTN. So far 13.2 lakh new enrolments have been made.
