GST Council to meet to revise rates, apparel, textile sector seek relief

By

Maverick Martins

Published
Jun 15, 2017

As India moves closer to the Goods and Services Tax (GST) regime, which will be implemented on July 1 across India, various sectors are making representations to the council seeking revision as they next meet on June 18 to discuss revision of rates.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley will chair the meeting to discuss rates on some more items and approval of draft rules, the Finance Ministry said in its statement.

"The main agenda items of the meeting include confirmation of the minutes of the 16th GST Council meeting held on June 11, approval of draft GST Rules and related Forms for Advance Ruling, Appeals and Revision, Assessment and Audit, E-Way Bill and Anti-Profiteering along with fitment/adjustment of GST rates on certain items among others," a statement said.

Various sectors like apparels, footwear, textiles and others have sought a revision in tax rates.

Tirupur Exporters Association (TEA) has requested a further reduction in the ‘job work on apparels’ sector. TEA president Raja M Shanmugham said the council had unfortunately not covered ‘Job work on apparels’ within the ambit of rate reduction. This negative step was likely to cause huge hardship to several micro industries in textile clusters like Tiruppur, he said in a statement.

Shanmugham urged Jaitley to discuss the concerned issue at the June 18 Council meeting and make a suitable amendment/ clarification so that this unintended hardship faced by micro and small textile units in Tirupur cluster are duly addressed.

Meanwhile, the cloth merchants of Mumbai have also decided to keep their shops shut for a day to oppose the Centre’s move of bringing the textile industry under the GST.

The Council in its last meeting had revised the rates of 66 items of the 133 for which representations had been received seeking change originally made in the four-slab indirect tax structure.