Government is making all efforts and trying its best to create consensus for smooth passage of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) bill, a senior Finance Ministry official said today.
"The government of the day is making all out efforts and trying its best to create consensus for the smooth passage of GST and the upper house of Parliament would be able to pass the legislation in the forthcoming session of Parliament", Ajay Tyagi ,Additional Secretary in Finance Ministry said at an event here.
He was addressing a seminar on National Agriculture Market, a release by PHD Chamber said.
Tyagi further pointed out that bringing about uniformity in taxation and other areas of economic engagement is one of the prime objectives of the Modi government, the release said.
With the passage of much talked about GST, the distortions in goods and services would disappear, he said.
"It would also make sure that multiple taxations including variant mandi taxes be rationalised after GST is enacted as it would also facilitate to bring about a placement of single national agriculture market in the country to enable farmers to obtain the maximum gains of their produce," he added.
Executive Director, Commodity Derivatives Market Regulation, Sebi S K Mohanty said national agriculture market for which the government has made a beginning would be conclusive in due course of time.
Efforts are afoot to integrate over 500 mandis in the country through electronic mode, he said.
GSTN is a not-for-profit, non-government, private limited
company promoted by the central and state governments with the specific mandate to build the IT infrastructure and the services required for implementing GST.
Its services will be made available to all stakeholders such as the central tax department and tax departments of all state governments, RBI, banks and taxpayers, Kumar said.
"If you want to know why it is a non-government, private company and not a PSU, for that let me take you back to 2010 when the finance ministry was looking at some large financial sector projects like NPS. Like TIN, GST, there were 4-5 such large projects.
He said further: "So they set up a Technical Advisory Group on Unique Projects (TAGUP), and they were asked to suggest road maps for implementing these large financial sector projects."
He added that they recommended setting up National Information Utilities (NIU) to implement such projects.
NIU, the TAGUP recommended, should be structured as non-government private company with a public purpose.
In July 2010, the empowered committee of state finance ministers, which had been working on GST since 2005, constituted an empowered group on IT infrastructure under Nandan Nilekani.
This committee had representation from the Centre, the revenue department and CBEC as well as from five states of Maharashtra, Gujarat, Karnataka, West Bengal and Odisha.
The panel recommended that NIU for GST should be a special purpose vehicle structured as a non-government, not-for-profit private company. "They suggested 49 per cent equity for government to be shared between central and state governments. So that is how in March 2013, this company got registered," he said.
This structure, he said, was decided by the empowered committee of state finance ministers on GST.
"They gave 4-5 reasons (for the structure). First, this SPV must have independence of management, it should not be reporting to any government, but it should be structured such that while it is not under any government, the latter will have a say in its management so that in day-to-day working, the company is not constrained by any rules, regulations or instruction of the government," he said.
Second, the organisation should be agile and nimble to take quick decisions. Also, it should be able to attract the best of talent both in IT and the field of indirect taxes and be able to hire and retain competent resources.
"This kind of freedom should be given which a PSU will never have. So, these were the reasons given," he said, adding that it was recommended that the government should exercise a strategic control over this company as the work it will do is in the public domain.
On the security of data, he said there are 8-levels of security, and ISO 27001, which is the best available standard for information security management, is being followed.
"So our system will be ISO 27001-certified which means the best available tools for security in the world whether in terms of hardware or software will be used. We are going to ensure the security of the data systems," he added.
