Andhra calls for early consensus on GST

Andhra Pradesh finance minister Anam Ramanarayana Reddy Friday requested the Empowered committee of finance ministers to accelerate the process of arriving at an early consensus to implement the Goods and Services Tax (GST).

Speaking at the empowered committee meeting held at Mussoorie in Uttarakhand, he stressed the need to arrive at an early consensus on the nature and extent of the constitutional amendments, required to implement the GST expeditiously in the overall national interest.

According to a statement released from his office here, Reddy requested the committee to look in to the aspects of revenue neutral rate.

"Sustained efforts are required to expeditiously work out a reasonable revenue neutral rate, which is highly essential for the implementation of the Goods and service Tax Act," he said.

On Integrated Goods and Services Tax (IGST) and Inter-state transactions, the finance minister suggested that IGST should be completely handled by the central government.

He hoped this model would go a long way in reducing the avoidable complexities in the process of implementation of the GST.

He said Andhra Pradesh was not in favour of adding more goods in goods list. He also made it clear that there can be no place for the concept of declared goods during the GST regime, in as much as the rates of taxes for almost all the goods are decided on the basis of consensus among the centre and the states.

"The proposal to place the mobile phones and tablets in declared goods list is not acceptable to our state as a matter of principle, though the rate of tax at present for mobile phones and tablets in the state is 5 percent," he said.