GST Council meet on May 28, tax waivers on medicines on agenda

The Goods and Services Tax (GST) Council will meet for the first time in seven months on May 28 to discuss key issues such as compensation to states and tax waivers on various medicines, medical devices, and health services amid the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, two officials said on Saturday.

Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s office on Saturday tweeted the date and timing of the meeting. The move came after several states, including Punjab and West Bengal, raised the issue of an inordinate delay in convening the meeting, officials aware of the developments said on condition of anonymity.

“Smt @nsitharaman will chair the 43rd GST Council meeting via video conferencing at 11 AM in New Delhi on 28th May 2021. The meeting will be attended by MOS Shri @ianuragthakur besides Finance Ministers of States & UTS and Senior officers from Union Government & States,” a tweet from the finance minister’s office said.

The GST Council is required to meet once in every quarter. Its meetings are convened by the finance ministry as the council is chaired by the Union finance minister. Finance ministers of states and Union Territories (UTS) are members of the council, the apex federal body on indirect tax matters.

The last time the council met was on October 5, 2020 (the 42nd meeting) to resolve the issue of compensating states for their revenue shortfall in 2020-21. That meeting was extended to next week on October 12 for finalising a centralised borrowing mechanism to meet the revenue shortfall. After that, the council did not meet.

Earlier this week, West Bengal finance minister Amit Mitra wrote to Sitharaman, asking her to convene the GST Council meeting immediately as states were expecting an alarming shortfall in GST compensation revenue because of the Covid-19 pandemic. “As per GOI [Government of India] projection, the shortfall was expected to be to the tune of ₹1,56,164 crores in 2021-22 without taking into consideration the impact of Covid Wave-2,” Mitra said in the letter to the finance minister. HT reported on the letter on May 14.

Last week, Punjab finance minister Manpreet Singh Badal asked Sitharaman to urgently convene a meeting of the council for a “serious mid-term correction” on tax issues. In his letter Badal said: “...failure to hold any constructive consultation with states for so long in such critical times makes me wonder whether Centre has usurped all the powers of states putting the spirit of cooperative federalism...”

Besides full compensation to states, many members want GST waivers on several critical items at the time of the pandemic, including vaccines, key medicines and health care services. These matters could be discussed at the council meet, the officials mentioned above said.