MADURAI: Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Friday dismissed Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s oft-repeated description of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) as a “Gabbar Singh tax”, asserting that the reform has benefited people and businesses across the country.
Speaking at the Tamil Nadu Foodgrains Merchants Association’s 80th anniversary celebration in Madurai, she urged manufacturers to slowly adopt the evolving models rather than complaining once the rules were implemented.
Listing out the efforts – digitisation of farmers and the produce to enable e-commerce traceability, sustainable packaging, integration into global supply chain and prioritisation of domestic market over export – to be taken by the manufacturers, she said, “Though it would take some time and efforts to adopt the changes, it is indispensable and need of the hour.”
Sitharaman pointed out that GST registrations have grown from 65 lakh in 2017 to 1.5 crore at present. Revenues have risen from Rs 7.19 lakh crore to more than Rs 22 lakh crore over the period. “If GST had truly been a cruel burden as alleged, then its registration and revenue base would not have expanded so significantly,” she said.
“For those who chide at the Union government for starting the GST taxing system with four slabs – 5%, 12%, 18% and 28% – and bringing it down to two – slabs – 5% and 18% – after a long haul are not realising the effort it went down over the years to stabilise the taxing system from its inception to the current reform,” she added.
The time the country took to rebuild the economy following the Covid-19 pandemic hindered the GST reform process and slowed it down by a few years, Ms. Sitharaman said.
But, contrary to the Opposition’s baseless claim that the Union government had ‘looted’ enough money before bringing in the new reforms, she said, “every Finance Minister of the State would be aware of the unanimity in the decision making process that went through since its inception to the current reform and the coordination of the State governments which was deliberately sought to make the GST taxing system a more inclusive one.”
“The new GST reforms which can be proudly termed as a ‘revolution’ has fulfilled Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s wish of making everything accessible for everyone,” she said.
Listing out the various products which have witnessed a drastic price fall, Ms. Sitharaman said, “Health insurance which suffered tax for the premium amount the people paid has been declared as 0% tax. Though the Opposition parties targeted the tax levied on health insurance, they failed to inform people that tax on health insurance premium existed even before the GST.”
Now, since the tax on it has been made zero, she wondered, “How the Oppositions would take on them now.”
Touching upon TN’s role in food production and processing, Sitharaman said the state ranked second nationally, contributing eight per cent to food processing output and hosting 1,100 production units, besides 24,000 small-scale enterprises. With eight products already granted GI tags, she urged the industry to prepare for global competitiveness through digitisation, sustainable packaging, and e-commerce expansion.
Sitharaman appealed to the association to come up with the visionary document – 2047, to chart a plan to determine what their role would be in developing the county.
While the association president S. V. S. S. Velshankar delivered the welcome address, association adviser S. P. Jeyapragasam detailed on the association’s history. Honorary secretary S. Sai Subramaniam proposed a vote of thanks.
