CHANDIGARH:Pursuant to Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh’s
personal efforts, the Centre has sanctioned the release of Rs 2228 crore
as grant-in-aid against the pending GST arrears of the state government
since August 2019.
The amount is aimed at compensating the Punjab
Government for loss of Revenue for the months of August and September
2019, on account of implementation of Goods and Services Tax (GST).
A communique in this regard was received on Monday by the Punjab Finance Department from the Department of Revenue (State Taxes) of the Union Finance Ministry, according to an The communication from the Centre comes amid repeated efforts by the state government, including the Chief Minister, to press the Union Government to release the pending GST payment. “Shocking that the Centre is delaying the GST compensation amounting to Rs 4,100 crore as compensation & arrears to Punjab. Urge PM @narendramodi ji & FM @nsitharaman ji to intervene & solve the problem which has the potential to bring governance of the state to a grinding halt”: Captain Amarinder had tweeted on November 25.
A
few days before that, Punjab Finance Minister Manpreet Singh Badal,
along with the finance ministers of West Bengal, Kerala, Delhi and
Rajasthan, had appealed to the Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman
to release the GST compensation without any delay.
The delay has
caused a serious financial crunch for the state, Captain Amarinder has
repeatedly been pointing out at various forums. He has also suggested
several ways to simplify the GST structure in order to resolve the
problems faced by states, for which this is the only major source of
revenue since the introduction of the new tax system.
According to
the letter received by the state government, the grant-in-aid is
provisional and subject to the condition that, in case the total GST
compensation entitlement of the State Government, on the basis of the
audited revenue figures of the Comptroller and General of India, falls
below the total amount of provisional GST compensation already released
to Punjab, the excess payment shall be recovered from future claims or
by direct debit to the State Government’s Account as per the procedure.
Similar procedure shall be followed in case the total cumulative entitlement of the State Government for payment of compensation falls below the total amount of compensation released to the state Government, due to improvement in the revenue performance of the state at a later stage, as per the letter.
