Velumani bats for GST of 5 pc on machined jobs

Velumani, who met her in New Delhi, in a memorandum, said the Centre’s recent order reducing GST on such job works from 18 per cent to 12 per cent did not benefit the MSSI much. The government should treat all the machined job orders, where material input is not involved to be taxed, at the same level of 12 per cent GST. The government can further reduce it to five per cent to benefit MSSI, the Minister said.

He also submitted a memorandum to Nirmala Sitharaman stating that “an amount of Rs 2029.22 crore is due towards the Performance Grant for the years 2017-18 to 2019-20 and an amount of Rs 4,345.57 crore is due towards Basic Grant for the year 2019-20 under the 14th CentralFinance Commission.”

He also said that “fund release would greatly benefit the state in providing the basic amenities, such as water supply, sanitation, waste management, street lights etc., and also to settle various utility bills of the Urban Local Bodies.”

The state government had been repeatedly demanding the pending dues from Centre and on every occasion the Centre refuses to entertain the demands of the state by stating that the funds for local bodies cannot be distributed without local body elections.

Velumani assured Finance Minister that the local body elections will be conducted shortly in the state. “In view of progress made in election process like publishing of delimitation notification and reservation of seats and offices, and in the context of the State Election Commission’s affidavit before the Supreme Court that the notification announcing the schedule of the election will be published in the last week of October 2019, I (Velumani) request you to kindly recommend for the release of the pending dues,” he requested.