"Dr. Asim Dasgupta, Chairman, Empowered Committee, Shri Sushil Modi, Deputy Chief Minister of Bihar, State Finance Ministers and friends!
It gives me great pleasure to be here on this occasion when the Empowered Committee under the dynamic leadership of Dr. Asim Dasgupta is releasing its First Discussion Paper on the proposed Goods and Services Tax (GST). At the outset, let me whole-heartedly congratulate all of you for giving shape and form to an idea whose time, I believe, has truly come.
We have indeed travelled a long way from the time the announcement was first made in 2006 by the then UPA Government to launch a comprehensive GST in the country by the 1st of April, 2010. At that stage, many of you were preoccupied with the challenge of switching over to the Value Added Tax (VAT) while others were settling down with that tax. The introduction of GST then would have looked like a distant event. But now all of you are richer by the first-hand experience of the benefits that the shift to VAT has brought both to your Governments and the business community leading to improvement in the economies of your States. That may be the reason why I have felt a sense of excitement and enthusiasm in the pace and spirit with which the Empowered Committee has worked over the last couple of months to carve out the design and structure of GST. I commend all of you and your teams for working tirelessly to put together the First Discussion Paper which reflects .... for read full content click on below icon
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