Finance Secretary V. Candavelou on Tuesday said that the Union Territory of Puducherry had made a smooth transition to the Goods and Services Tax (GST) regime.
Around 92% of the traders in the UT had registered on the GST portal so far with as many as 1,054 registrations facilitated through the help desk set up by the Commercial Taxes Department.
Mr. Candavelou was speaking at a traders’ conclave organised by the Puducherry chapter of Confederation of All India Traders on Demonetisation, Digital Payments and GST.
“It is now more than one year since demonetisation has been effected and we are on the right track. Any economy requires a shake-up at regular intervals and demonetisation is one such macro-economic measure. The Government has been able to bring all the money into the banking system and this will help the economy to a large extent,” he said.
Mr. Candavelou pointed out that an attitudinal change was required for people to start using digital transactions. The service providers such as MasterCard and Visa also play a very important role and other payment systems must work out a mechanism to reduce the service charge on all digital transactions.
The Puducherry government has already raised this issue in the recently concluded GST council at Guwahati, he said, adding that the government was expecting a favourable outcome.
The government will be releasing a notification containing details of rates for around 200 products on which the Centre has reduced the tax structure from 28% to 18%, he added.
B.C. Bhartia, national president of CAIT, said digital transactions were the future and the confederation was trying to educate the traders on various forms of digital payments.
A Digital Rath aimed at driving behavioural change and spreading awareness on the importance of digital payments was flagged off by Union Minister Smriti Irani recently. The rath will reach out to traders in Lucknow, Kolkata, Puducherry, Navi Mumbai and Bhopal, to inform them about benefits of electronic payments and how to leverage the tool in expanding their business, he said.
