Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Modi, who is also the Convenor of the Group of Ministers on Integrated Goods and Service Tax (IGST), has ruled out any possibility of a hike in GST rates in the near future.
He told presspersons after a meeting on GST here on Monday that the rates would not be increased particularly during the economic slowdown. The GST Council considered changing rates once every year at the last meeting. He said both the Centre and States are not ready to raise tax rates as the economy is currently going through a period of slowdown.
Mr. Modi said that about 24.86 lakh fake or bogus registrations under GST have been weeded out during 2017-19. New GST registrations have been added after Aadhar authentication. Currently, the number registrations stood at 1.21 core. Of this, 55.04 lakh dealers migrated from the pre-GST and 66.79 lakh are new registrations.
On the revenue front, he said the economic slowdown has impacted revenue mobilisation. However, out of eight months in this fiscal year, revenue collection was more than ₹1 lakh crore for six months.
