Bhopal: Thanks to GST, the weekend dinner at your favourite restaurant may dig deeper holes in your pocket. Eating out has become costlier after the implementation of the new tax regime and so have sweets and other items sold by confectioners and sweet shops. In some cases, prices have jumped by up to 12 per cent – from 6 percent to 18 per cent. However, those patronising street food joints remain unaffected.
GST has different tax slabs for different products – five per cent for mawa, ghee, Bengali sweets, dry fruits and sonpapdi, 12 for salted snacks like chips, chat et al, 18 for bakery products like shakes, pastries, cookies, kulfi and ice-cream and 28 on chocolates, mocktails, slush and soda. The price of Thalis has gone up in most of the restaurants.
Some of the restaurateurs report up to 10 per cent drop in sales. Others are hopeful that GST would bring the prices of raw material down after some days.
Ishan Soni, owner of Milan Restaurant, M P Nagar told Free Press, “The prices remain the same on our menu but now we add GST to the bill instead of service tax and VAT. It totalled 11 per cent but we charge only six per cent from the customers who preferred to be served. In case of self-service, there was no tax. But now we are charging 12 per cent tax in the self service zone, 18 per cent in our AC restaurant and 12 per cent in non-AC restaurant. Earlier the tax rate was same for both” Soni further added “The Thali that cost Rs 158 then now costs Rs 178.”
“Yes, GST has changed the prices. Now we are charging 18 per cent GST, including five per cent for AC restaurant. We add the tax amount to the bill. Earlier, we only used to take six per cent service tax from customers. It means the prices of various items have increased by 12 per cent due to GST,” said TB Pandey, manager of Hakeem LHIndia, adding “The price of a plate of butter chicken after GST is Rs 353. Earlier it was 330.”
Jose, assistant manager of Indian Coffee House said “We are now charging 18 per instead of six per cent earlier. After the implementation of GST, the number of customers has decreased by 10 per cent.”
“We have switched to GST from day one. The rates vary from 5 per cent on mawa to 40 cent tax on cold drinks,” said Nitin, cashier at Manohar Dairy adding that “Now the rate of a Thali is Rs 212 earlier it was Rs 198. We are also taking 10 per cent tax for parcel.”
Naveen Sujwani, owner of Bapu Ki Kutiya, M.P. Nagar said, “Our restaurant is non AC. So we are charging 12 per cent GST. Earlier, we used to charge 11 per cent tax including service tax and VAT. So, the prices are up by one per cent. A thali that cost Rs 159 earlier now costs Rs 161.”
“We are paying 12 per cent GST but the prices of our products is same. We are not charging anything extra from our consumers. It is as usual. We are working on lower margins. We will wait and watch for one month. May be the price of raw materials would decreased,” said Amit Soni, owner of Milan Sweet and Namkeen shop, MP Nagar.
Pramod Gokhle, cashier of Annapurna Bhojnalaya and sweets shop said “We will start charging GST after two or three days.”
