Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has clarified that the role of the officers currently manning the departments of Customs and Central Excise would not be curtailed with the implementation of the GST regime.
He met a delegation of the Indian Revenue Service officers earlier this week where he assured that the service officers would play a key role in the implementation of the regime.
According to a association release, Jaitley assured that composition of the GST Council Secretariat would be looked into and nature of the posts would be studied.
The association had demanded that both the Secretary as well as Additional Secretary should be from their service as GST was a highly technical matter. The Minister was informed that implementation of GST has witnessed rough weather in several countries and several Governments have lost on this count. The Greek economic crisis was result of faulty implementation of GST by Generalist officers.
After giving a patient hearing to the delegation he perused the whole representation and accepted the role played by the IRS (C&CE) officers in the smooth and successful historical developments in Indirect Tax Administration and transition from time to time in the country.