Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Pranab Mukherjee launched the much-awaited Goods and Services Tax (GST) in presence of Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, Vice President Hamid Ansari, Speaker Sumitra Mahajan, other Cabinet Ministers and government officials at Parliament’s Central Hall on July 1. While a nuber of products are set to be become costlier and cheaper, it is being reported that GST rollout will create one lakh in just three months of its implementation.
According to report in PTI, Union Minister for Labour and Employment Bandaru Dattatreya affirmed that the GST will boost the employment sector and create one lakh jobs across the country in first three months. He told the media that over 60,000 person would get jobs in the accountancy sector adding that nation was achieving economic and tax freedom with the historic new tax regime.
He further stated that the Union Finance Mministry had organised 1118 workshops in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh in the last six month to create GST awareness and help traders and the common public to understand the positive impact of GST. He noted that the 1500 slabs in the tax system have been now brought down to just four tax slabs stating that with GST roll out, 17 kinds of taxes were already scarpped away.
While explaining the impact of GST, Dattatreya told the reporters that there will be no delays in the transport of goods as the check posts located at various state borders were removed. GDP growth will also go up to 9 per cent from 7 per cent while the prices of essential goods will see a drop, the Union Minister said.
Local levies like excise, value added tax, octroi, service tax are set to be replaced by GST. All goods are aligned in the five slabs of taxation— 5%, 12%, 18%, 28% and 28%. While President Pranab Mukherjee said that he was pleased that the GST council had finished the task in time, PM Modi came up with another acronym and termed GST as “Good and Simple Tax”
