Existing investor benefits in MP won't be hit by GST: Chouhan

Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan today assured investors that the implementation of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) will not have any impact on tax concessions offered by the state.
"The other tax benefits that we were offering will continue after the implementation of GST, what will be its form, we will have to sit and discuss... We will set up a task force, so that some of the benefits which were committed earlier, in different sectors, we will give them entirely.
"We will sit and fine tune whatever is needed. Principally, I can say that because of GST, whatever benefits investors are getting will not reduce," he said at the CII event here on 'Investment Opportunities' in Madhya Pradesh.

Madhya Pradesh offers many benefits to attract investments like exemption in entry tax, reimbursement of Value Added Tax (VAT) and Central Sales Tax (CST), reimbursement at the rate of 15 per cent for the expenditure incurred on establishment of food park or horticulture hub, among others.
"VAT, CST and entry tax will be replaced (by GST) and these were the principal incentives the state offered in its policy. The cabinet committee and the Chief Minister have taken a decision that as and when GST gets implemented, whatever be the financials, whatever was available to you under the VAT and CST regime, the same will be protected under the GST regime.

"It will again be a reimbursement process because exemptions are not possible but the financials will remain the same what it was in the present regime," Mohammed Suleman, Principal Secretary, Commerce, Industry and Employment Madhya Pradesh government said.

The state has identified 10 focus sectors for investments like automobile and engineering, textile, renewable energy, agri-business and food processing, pharmaceuticals, urban development, tourism, IT and IT-enabled services, education and health-care, ahead of the Global Investors Summit (GIS) in October.
"We are focusing on food processing because we are ahead in the field of agriculture and we want to do value addition in Madhya Pradesh. Our agriculture growth has been 20 per cent in the last four years.

"Asia's largest solar plant is at Neemuch in Madhya Pradesh and now the world's largest solar power plant will be at Rewa in the state, so the renewable energy is another sector where investments are possible," Chouhan said.
In the previous GIS in 2014, Madhya Pradesh received an investment intention worth USD 66.1 billion and since then, in the last two years, the state has realised an investment of Rs 3 lakh crore.