Special session of Odisha assembly to ratify GST Bill on Sept 1

State cabinet endorses new start-up policy promising sops to MSMEs

The Odisha cabinet on Tuesday decided to place the constitutional amendment bill on Goods and Services Tax (GST) before the state assembly for ratification.

A special session of the state assembly will be convened on September 1 to ratify the bill.

The cabinet also endorsed a new start up policy for the sate promising slew of incentives for the entrepreneurs intending to set up micro, small and medium industries in the state.

Briefing media persons after the cabinet meeting, the state chief secretary Aditya Prasad Padhi said, the Odisha government is in favour of implementation of GST as Odisha as a consuming state is poised to gain under the new tax regime.

Describing GST as a milestone in indirect tax reforms, he said, with the proposed uniform tax rate in the country, goods and services can be moved across states seamlessly.

It may be noted the 122nd constitutional amendment bill on GST had been passed in Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha recently and it needs the ascent of legislative assemblies of at least 50 per cent states to be effective.

On the new start up policy, Padhi said, Odisha aims for a slot among top three "Startup Hubs" in India by 2020. For this, the state government plans to create enabling environment and supporting eco-system to set up 1,000 start-ups in next five years.

In the draft Odisha Start-up Policy -2016, it is proposed that a ‘Startup Capital Infrastructure’ fund with an initial corpus of Rs 25 crore will be setup to support development of hard and soft infrastructure for the start-up ecosystem such as physical infrastructure for incubators including testing labs, design studio, tool rooms and virtual incubators.

For providing seed funding to the start-ups, the private state-specific funds will be encouraged to setup operations for funding start-ups and start-up ecosystem. The state government may participate in SEBI (Security and Exchange of India) approved early stage seed/venture capital funds up-to 25 per cent as limited partner allocating an initial corpus of Rs 100 crore for the same.

The government would establish one or more start-up and innovation park in the state as one-stop-destination for start-ups, either on its own or in partnership with private sector.

The CSR Funds of state PSUs (Public Sector Undertakings) will also be channelized and utilized for the development of startup and innovation park in compliance with the Companies Act 2013.

The state government will provide marketing and publicity assistance upto Rs five lakh for the introduction of innovated product in the market. The start-ups shall be exempted from VAT scrutiny for three years from the date of certification and the cost of filing and prosecution of patent application will be reimbursed to the start-up companies as per the Industrial Policy 2015.