Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, on Thursday, said the Centre would sort out compensation issues with States to ensure early roll-out of Goods and Service Tax (GST), a new indirect tax regime that will subsume various levies.
After meeting State finance ministers, he said there was a broad consensus on implementing the GST regime, and efforts would be made to sort out the pending issues, especially with regard to compensation for loss of revenue.
“Fixing compensation issue is critical to roll-out of GST,” Mr. Jaitley said.
Briefing the media about the meeting, Minister of State for Finance Nirmala Sitharaman said it was difficult to give a timeframe for introduction of the new tax regime, but “it (the constitutional amendments) will happen soon.”
‘Greater consensus’ “Discussions are intensive and in friendly atmosphere. We are definitely progressing on the issue of GST. We are moving towards greater consensus,” she said.
“(This) is an issue, with due respect, we have inherited and we would like to work on, we are sorting out,” she said.
