GST Will Add To Competitiveness of Exports: FIEO .

Welcoming the cabinet decision for going ahead with the amendment of the GST bill (115th Amendment), President, Federation of Indian Export Organisations (FIEO), Ramu S Deora stated that this would be necessary in view of the fact that the centre cannot impose excise duty beyond manufacturing stage & the state cannot levy a tax on services.

Deora said that GST will add to competitiveness of exports as rebating of goods and service tax would be possible and many of the state taxes will be eligible for input credit for offsetting against other state taxes.

FIEO Chief elaborated that significant progress has been made on the GST Network, the IT infrastructure backbone for GST and it has been announced that a pilot portal will be set up by June 2011, in collaboration with 11 states, before rolling out the IT backbone.

Further, Deora added that a strong signal of the likely GST rates has also been made by maintaining the present excise duty and service tax rate at 10 per cent. While the peak excise duty rate is unchanged at 10 per cent, the concessional rate of 4 per cent has now gone up to 5 per cent and exemptions on a list of 130 items have been replaced by  a nominal rate of 1 per cent   without input tax offsets.

President, FIEO, however, stated that the  laying out the specific date for introduction of the GST, the extension of the GST to all products without exception, the integration of the excise and service tax regime on the output side, and the elimination of the special additional customs duty as well as the central sales tax need also to be addressed in this context.

Deora said that zero rebating of exports will be possible with single GST rate in the country.  

Source : smetimes.tradeindia.com