The Kerala Legislative assembly, on Thursday passed the Kerala GST Bill, 2017.
After the rollout of GST from July 1, the Government had promulgated the Kerala Goods and Services Tax Ordinance, in June last to give effect to the new law. The present Act replaced the ordinance by an Act of the State legislature.
Traders were exploiting the ignorance of consumers regarding GST and charging more. Even prices of items which had no connection with GST had been hiked.
Regarding the question of state’s power to control the price of goods under GST, the State Finance Minister, Dr. Isaac replied that price rise following the implementation of the GST regime was indeed a serious issue and that the Centre’s attitude towards the concerns expressed by the States was very unhelpful.
He said that in the last GST Council meeting, Kerala had argued for the implementation of stringent measures to control price rise but the Centre had taken the stand that more time should be given to traders as input credit would not show before September.
The state had asked the Centre to call a meeting of all stakeholders in the trading sector and to make it clear that they had to reduce MRPs as taxes had come down. But the Centre had refused to give any assurance on that count.
Dr. Isaac said that Kerala had now decided to list out the earlier MRPs of commodities, the effective reduction in taxes, and the new MRPs and to present it at the next GST Council meeting to put pressure on the Centre to immediately intervene to reduce prices.
The State Legal Metrology Department would be asked to intensify their inspections and to check if traders were charging more than the MRPs from consumers, he said.
