FSSAI Will Rearrange Food Business To Meet GST Norms

Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) announced that it will relook the food business in order to rearrange it in respect of total annual turnover to meet the Goods and Services Tax regulations.

As per the GST norms, the business having turnover more than Rs. 20 lakh necessarily pays GST from July 1, 2017.

Pawan Kumar Agarwal, CEO, FSSAI said in this regard, “We are in the process of amending the licensing and registration norms. Under this, we are going to reclassify the kind of food businesses (KoB) on the basis of turnover to align with GST and MSME norms.”

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Such Wise, the KoBs number will be subdued from the existing 17 to 8. For example, a food business category coming under annual turnover of Rs. 12 lakh will be supposedly enhanced to Rs. 20 lakh, he further said.

Side by side, FSSAI is also working on to develop an e-system which can monitor the food businesses to follow the safety norms mentioned by the authority. This compliance monitoring system will take 2-3 months to complete from now. He mentioned, “A track record of each food business will help while issuing a fresh licence for new products. Right now, we don’t have a proper record at one place.”

At the time of issuing a licence, the regulator of the whole process will notice as well if the company is following the product standard and marked norms among others or not, he said.

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He further said, “These parameters will also be attached while issuing a licence.” FSSAI is ready to make a framework and anticipated provisions and hire a third party agency to handle the rating related work. He said, “We are ready with the framework. But who will do the rating? Globally, it is done by the regulatory staff. Since our staff is limited, we are exploring a third party agency.”

To start with, states will do a hygiene rating in listed cities. “As we gain confidence, we will make it compulsory,” he favoured.

CEO said the authority is paying heed to self-compliance regarding the food safety norms. To make everything systematic, the businesses are educated to make sure that at least one person in a business must train in food safety precautionary and will work as a safety advisor/officer in every business.

Till yet, 800-odd training programmes have been directed taking 18,000 members. He said, “As we create the capacity, we are going to make it mandatory in a phased manner in the next 1-2 years.”