GST: Amit Mitra demands white paper from Centre

KOLKATA: State Industry and Finance minister Amit Mitra demanded a white paper from the Centre to enable the Goods and Service Tax (GST) council to take note of the situation on the ground and suggest guidelines for the future

On the sidelines of 4th Management Committee Meeting of ASSOCHAM on Thursday, Mitra responding to a query on GST said: "Now, I find that the export industry has been badly hit. So I have requested the Union Finance minister to produce a white paper on the preparedness of GST, problems of GST and call an emergency meeting and put it in the GST Council which is the highest authority and discuss with us so that some solutions can be found."

Mitra has already written to Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley urging him to convene an urgent meeting of the GST Council to discuss the problems being faced by small scale taxpayers.

He added that the former chairman of the ASSOCHAM managing committee had said that there is desperation among people and it needs to be solved. "I had predicted this earlier and had urged them to postpone the roll-out of

GST, but they did not pay heed," he said.

Raising concern over the arrest clause in GST he said that the small and medium industries have been the worst hit. "Small and medium sector contributes 40 percent of industrial GDP and 80 percent of the total employment by industry. Are they prepared to adjust to the new accounting system within a month of declaring the final rates," he questioned.