GST in India as it completes five years -Sethurathnam Ravi BSE

Sethurathnam Ravi (S Ravi) is the former BSE Chairman and founder of Ravi Rajan & Co. In his past career he held the position of Union Finance & Revenue Secretary at India Ministry of Finance. Presently, Mr. Ravi holds the position of Non-Executive Chairman of Tourism Finance Corp. of India Ltd. and Director & Managing Partner at RRCA & Associates. Sethurathnam Ravi shares his views about the journey of GST in India as it completes five years since introduction.

Sethurathnam Ravi (S Ravi) is the former BSE Chairman and founder of Ravi Rajan & Co. Presently, Mr. Ravi holds the position of Non-Executive Chairman of Tourism Finance Corp. of India Ltd. and Director & Managing Partner at RRCA & Associates. Sethurathnam Ravi shares his views about the journey of GST in India as it completes five years since introduction.

According to Mr. Ravi, when the GST was introduced 5 years ago there were a lot of misgivings about how the centre and state governments will work together regarding the tax collection and how the distribution will work. In Sethurathnam Ravi's opinion, compounded with this issue was the platform issue. At the time of the introduction of the GST, there was also the interpretation and the awareness issue from the SSE and it had also created a lot of confusion in that, he says.

S Ravi also explains the other obstacles that were on the road of GST until its successful acceptance. He says that the way was not easy for GST to get accepted by the people, but surely it was progressive and has finally seen the outcome. In his own words, "There were also issues of input credit, whether it is to be set up against liabilities. Then there were clarifications on that also, and there where issues on various rates that where there. So, I think over this last 5 years, 47 meetings with the GST council had taken place and every meeting was progressive to address some of these issues".

Sethurathnam Ravi also says that the Goods and Services Tax has been a major reform across India. It has changed the view of the people about taxes and even the superseding of many of the other small indirect taxes was itself a major reform. In this way people had to only pay one direct tax, other than paying many small different taxes. S Ravi also highlights the fact that, to streamline this, in the last few years we have seen, despite a strong covid outburst, a very strong recovery in terms of collection in the form of GST.

"I look at it that it has been a very progressive journey. It was full of challenges of acceptability. But now it has been accepted. And I think more important is how we address to the lower category of people, i.e., the MSME and the SME's who have to bring in more awareness and to make the cost of compliance lesser. And also, to see how the compensation sess is taken care in the future. These are few of the things that will come in the future. But it has been a good journey. And the rationalization is taken place at a very fast pace", Sethurathnam Ravi concluded.