Indore (Madhya Pradesh): The signs of happiness which traders in the city displayed after an impressive spree of Deepawali buying and robust wedding shopping have now changed to signs of a storm brewing due to the new hurdles to their businesses that have cropped up on the godds and services tax (GST) front. Other than GST rates on textiles and readymade garments being increased, 30 new items have been added to the e-way list.
Recently, GST rates on readymade garments and textiles rose from 5% to 12%. At the same time, 30 new items were added to the existing list of items which the e-way bill necessarily has to generate. Both the measures have irritated traders, who were hoping to do robust selling after a sluggish wedding season last year. Now, different traders organisations are planning to protest against the measures of the state government in a big way.
The traders of the Cloth Market, under the aegis of the MT Cloth Market Merchants’ Association, are going to submit a memorandum to the state GST commissioner, Lokesh Jatav, at his office on Friday afternoon. Arun Bakliwal, executive committee member of the association, said there was a great amount of anger brewing among the traders over the increase in the GST rates on textile items and garments. “We shall submit our memorandum to the state GST commissioner and urge him to withdraw the rate hike,” he said, adding, “If our demands aren’t met, we’ll expand the scope of our agitation.”
On the other hand, irked over the addition of 30 new items to the e-way list and per day legality of e-way bill by 200 km, the traders have demanded that the notification in this regard should be cancelled. In this regard, a delegation of traders, under the aegis of the Ahilya Chamber of Commerce and Industries, met Jatav at his office on Monday. The delegation handed over a memorandum of their demands to him.
Senior leaders of the traders Khandelwal said that, now, the requirement of e-way bill has been made mandatory on 30 new items. “It means more formalities are being imposed on these added items. New troubles are being imposed on the already burdened traders due to a lot of taxes and immeasurable paperwork. The validity of the e-way bill is fixed up to 200 km per day by ignoring the impractical difficulties it faces in transporting retail goods,” he said.
Khandelwal added, “We’re going to expand our agitation against the e-way measure in a big way. For this, we’ve called a mega-meeting of our over-90 different business associations next Monday at the Hindi Sahitya Samiti Hall. The traders, along with their tax consultants, will discuss in detail and chalk out a protest plan.
