National Anti profiteering Authority to be announced within one week: Adhia

Finance Secretary Hasmukh Adhia said on Saturday that a decision regarding the formation of a National Anti profiteering Authority would be announced next week, amid reports of uneven rates of Goods and Services Taxes (GST) being levied on the consumers.

"Maximum one week. We will constitute it within a week," Hasmukh Adhia told ANI.

The recently-promoted Finance Secretary appealed that GST rate cut benefits be passed on to consumers, adding that companies should paste stickers of revised rate of Maximum Retail Prices on their products at the immediate possible date.

"We request companies to pass on benefits to consumers immediately if you do not want the action of National Anti profiteering Authority (NAA)," Adhia commented while appealing to the companies to immediately aware consumers of their rate cut of products by giving advertisement in news papers.

The Finance Secretary also said that the retailers or vendors must charge revised rates from consumers after November 15.

"We will catch companies if their vendor/retailers are not passing the rate cut benefits to consumers. We won't catch the retailers," added Adhia.

Replying to the question about overcharging of restaurants, Adhia said that the government has no control over the rates of small restaurants.

"If small restaurant charge higher then practically they will loose their customers due to competition," he stated.

"Earlier restaurants charged more from customers stating that they are being charged under 18 percent GST. Now the customer at least knows that in their bill the government is charging only five percent," he said.

The Finance Secretary also stated that the government will ask big restaurants chains about their rates.

As far as big chain of restaurants are concerned, if they've uniformally raised prices, we'll ask them what their input tax credit was which they don't get now. If input tax credit mismatches with prices raised anti-profiteering action will be taken against them, Adhia added.

On being asked about government's plans to reduce the number of slabs in Goods and Services Tax (GST), Adhia opined that " GST should be simple, number of slabs should be reduced. There is no difference of opinion on this. The question is how right it is to do so."

The GST Council at its 23rd meeting held on November 10, 2017 in Guwahati, had recommended the reduction of the GST rate from 28 to 18 percent on goods falling under 178 headings.

Now only 50 items are under the GST slab rate of 28 percent.

A large number of items have also witnessed a reduction in GST rates from 18 to 12 percent, 12 to 5 percent and so on.