Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Wednesday said that India is one of the few countries in the world that is maintaining a respectable growth rate despite a global slowdown. Addressing an interactive session on "GST in India", he added that nobody has the right to stall growth in the country.
He said that all political parties had accepted the idea of the Goods & Service Tax Bill, but the Opposition only has "lip sympathy" for it. Noting that Opposition parties had delayed the passing of the bill in the previous parliament session as well, he added that the current mood is to not cooperate in this session either.
On Wednesday, the finance minister also indicated that he may accept Congress’ demand to scrap the 1% additional tax, but said he did not agree with their demand to incorporate the GST rate in the constitution bill. Congress has been stalling the passage of the GST Bill, demanding a simple rule that does not give states the power to levy an additional tax over the 18 per cent tax rate laid down in the Constitutional Amendment Bill.
He explained that they had proposed the additional 1% tax on inter-state sales as they believed manufacturing states such as Gujarat and Tamil Nadu, which spent significant amounts on developing infrastructure, would lose money as GST is more of a destination tax.
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