MSME bodies-Exporters hold talks with Finance Minister over GST

New Delhi, Sept 29 (KNN) Due to stress in the MSME sector, different industry bodies as well as exporter associations met Finance Minister Arun Jaitley requesting the Ministry to take cognizance of the issues and also resolve them.

Federation of Indian Export Organisations (FIEO) President Ganesh Gupta in a press interview informed of the proceedings of the meeting.

The exporters raised the problem of capital blockage due to delayed refunds. Also demand of exempting GST on goods for exports was raised during the meeting. Another important concern highlighted by the industry bodies was the sudden revision of duty drawback rates.

The duty drawback rate that is scheduled to change from October is not in the best interest of the industry, the government must consider continuation of the existing drawback rates, FEIO added.

Raising the impact of the new tax on small exporters, FIEO said that the small and micro exporters are badly hit under GST as they have to borrow money to pay GST.

FIEO said that the availability of credit and cost of credit are the biggest challenges for the MSMEs which have become more alarming as money is borrowed for payment of GST on exports.

Also Gems and Jewellery Export Promotion council that was a part of the meeting informed the finance minister about the problem specific to their sector post GST. GJPEC informed that there has been a drastic decline in exports from the sector causing a great deal of uneasiness among the units.

GJPEC demanded exemption from Integrated GST (IGST) on procurement of precious metals from nominated agencies for the purpose of manufacturing and export of jewellery, batting for the small and micro level units, that are being impacted the most under the new taxation.

With regard to the filing of the returns, the exporters and representatives of industry appealed for a quarterly returns filing system instead of the monthly returns at present and asked for refunds for exporters to be based on GSTR-3B, rather than GSTR-1, 2 and 3. (KNN/ DA)