Petrol and diesel will not be included under GST (Goods and Services Tax) until and unless the income under the GST reign strengthens said the former chief economic adviser Arvind Subramanian.
At an interactive meeting which was held at ‘Manthan’, Subramanian said “You know it is desirable to have that (inclusion of petrol and diesel in GST). There is a good economic explanation or fiscal explanation for why it is not easy. Because if you put petroleum products into GST, naturally you will have a loss of revenues”.
While answering a question about the inclusion of petroleum products in the GST, Subramanian said “Because it is (a) widely-used intermediate input. And, therefore, the thinking was that the GST revenues have to stabilize before that can be brought in because you need to have enough other revenues to cushion for the loss of putting petroleum into the GST”.
Subramanian also mentioned that the country’s growth faced downward slope but still remains significant in the international context. “India is still the place of dynamism in the sense that the most important hope is that our children’s lives will be better than us.”
Subramanian also said that there is a need for an improvement of many things in GST due to which there are many hurdles waiting ahead for the tax collections.
From past 25-30 years, improvement in Indians including the BPL has been seen which has grown rapidly.
He said “That is why we see a big reduction in the poverty, improvement in life expectancy. But it is true that disproportionately, the benefits of are concentrated at the top”. This might be right, but this is across the world occurrence and not only for India, he said.
Subramanian ignored the question asked about the Urjit Patel’s resignation as the Reserve Bank of India governor.
Also the former chief economic adviser Arvind Subramanian stated that the implementation of goods and services tax would have been much better if his suggestions were taken into consideration.
