The GST empowered committee of state finance ministers has selected a name, Dr. Amit Mitra as a new chairman of the committee. He is a West Bengal Finance Minister also. Moreover, the post of chairman was empty since November, 2015 as the Kerala Finance Minister KM Mani had left the post in November due to corruption charges.
Before joining politics, Dr. Mitra was an economist and he was on a post of secretary general of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry. He was selected at a meeting of state finance ministers that was directed by FM Arun Jaitley. Mr. Jayant Sinha, who is minister of state for finance, confirmed that Dr. Mitra has been selected chairperson of the empowered committee at the meeting on Friday.
Interestingly, he did not attended the meeting as he was unwell, and Mr. Jaitley made a phone call to inform him that he has been selected as new head of the committee. Mr. Sinha said, “We are hopeful that GST bill will be passed in the budget session. We are getting support from all the states present here, all parties on GST.” Moreover, the budget session will start next week and the government is planning to roll-out the Bill in the next session at any cost.
Let’s look at the short note of GST, the Goods and Services Tax is a type of indirect tax and it will replace the multiple indirect taxes as services tax, VAT etc with one single tax and it will also make a single market for one dozen state levies. The GST will pickup the India’s GDP growth by 2 per cent.
