Passage of GST Bill is history in the making, says 'optimistic' Jaitley

Striding out confidently from the Parliament after the Goods and Services Tax (GST) Bill was finally passed, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Wednesday said the passage of the bill in the House was history is in the making, adding that the country will witness transforming into a new system of indirect taxation.

Jaitley further informed that the other subordinate legislations will also be considered by the GST Council on March 31 and once that is approved, the principal task would remain fixing of tariff against every commodity for which a formula has already been devised.

"The fact that the Central Parliament (Lok Sabha) has accepted the draft, identically what has been unanimously prepared by the GST Council, also sends the great indication to the entire country and to all the states. We are virtually seeing history in the making because we are now going to be transformed into a new system of indirect taxation," Jaitley told the media.

"I will be taking this to the Rajya Sabha for its opinion and consideration and we seem to be well within time while doing that," he further said.

Jaitley concluded saying that he is reasonably optimistic about meeting the deadlines.

Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh also expressed his happiness over the same, saying that with GST being passed, India will see growth in its GDP directly affecting employment.

"The GST Bill was a very important one. With the passing of it, India's GDP might see a rise by 1-1.45 percent. Increase in GDP will lead to increase in employment," he said.

Taking to Twitter, Prime Minister Narendra Modi wished the entire nation over the passage of the Bill.

"Congratulations to all on the passage of the GST Bill. New year, new law, new India," he tweeted.

The Lok Sabha today passed four key Goods and Services Tax Bills, rejecting amendments moved by the opposition. The Bills are related to Central GST, Integrated GST, UT GST and GST Compensation.

The Central GST deals with taxation related to Centre, integrated GST deals in taxation of inter-state movement of goods and services while the Union Territory GST Bill covers taxation in Union Territories.

The compensation law has been prepared to give a legislative backing to the Centre's promise to compensate the states for five years for any revenue loss arising out of GST implementation.

Government has set a target of first of July for rollout of GST, which will subsume excise, service tax, VAT and other local levies. Once these Bills are cleared by Parliament, the states will then take the state GST Bill to their respective assemblies. S-GST has been prepared as a model of the central GST, with each state incorporating state-specific exemptions.