GST Council constitutes 18 sectoral groups for smooth roll-out of GST

The Goods and Services Tax (GST) Council on Friday announced the setting up of 18 sectoral groups to ensure a smooth roll-out of the GST.

The newly constituted groups will represent various sectors of the economy and will be headed by senior officers of the Centre and the states, who will ensure smooth implementation of GST by timely responding to the issues and problems of their respective sectors.

"The officials of these sectoral groups will deal with the issues and the problems of the respective sectors they represent. Concerned industry groups or associations or even individual industry representative(s) may approach the respective sectoral group officers with their problems, if any, relating to GST implementation who, in turn, will try to guide and help them in resolving the same. This exercise will help in dealing with most of the sectoral problems and issues at the local/regional level," said a finance ministry statement.

The sectors which would be looked into by the group include IT and ITes, textiles, gems and jewellery, food processing, e-commerce, oil and gas, pharma and MSME.

The officials of these sectoral groups will deal with the issues of the respective sectors they represent.

Earlier, the GST Council chaired by Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had decided on the tax rates for goods and services under various sectors to be levied under the new tax regime from July 1.

The council in its 14th meeting on May 18-19 had decided to set up these sectoral groups to better understand industry concerns as India moves towards the GST, which will subsume 16 different taxes including excise, service tax, VAT and other local levies.