GST Council Meet: 33 items moved from 18% GST slab

December 22: The 31st Goods and Service Tax (GST) council meeting began on Saturday in the national capital. The GST Council on Saturday cut rates of 33 items from 18 per cent to 12 per cent and 5 per cent, Puducherry Chief Minister V Narayanasamy said, following a meeting chaired by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley. The meeting at Vigyan Bhawan was attended by finance ministers all the states.

Earlier this week, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had said the government is aiming to bring 99 per cent of items below the 18 per cent GST slab and warned of stringent action against defaulters of bank loan and fugitives. The Council meeting is expected to please the middle class as the decision is likely to bring down prices of commodities used by the middle class.

Let us have a look on the items on which GST has been slashed:

Monitors and Television screens, Tyres, Power banks of Lithium-ion batteries have brought down from 28% to 18% slab. Accessories for carriages for specially abled persons have been brought down to 5%. Movie tickets up to Rs 100 brought down to 12% and above Rs 100 has been brought down to 18% from 28%. There is no GST cut on cement and auto parts. There are 28 items left in the 28% bracket if we include luxury & sin items. 13 items are from automobile parts & 1 is cement. Cement’s revenue is 13000 crore & automobile parts revenue is 20000 crore. If they are brought down from 28% to 18% implications are of 33000 crore.

(More details awaited……….)