The Central Government has recently released GST Compensation of Rs. 13,806 crore to States for March’2020. Taking this amount into account, entire compensation upto 2019-20 has been released to States. The total amount of compensation released for the year 2019-20 is Rs. 1,65,302 crore whereas the amount of cess collected during the year 2019-20 was Rs. 95,444 crore.
To release the compensation for 2019-20, balance of cess amount collected during 2017-18 and 2018-19 was also utilised. In addition, Centre had transferred Rs. 33,412 crore from Consolidated Fund of India to the Compensation Fund as a part of an exercise to apportion balance of IGST pertaining to 2017-18.
The central government’s payout to states as compensation towards goods and services tax for the year ended March more than doubled over the last year as a result of slowing economic activity. The compensation to states was Rs 1,65,302 crore, the Ministry of Finance said in a statement, adding the GST compensation cess, collected by the Centre, stood at Rs 95,444 crore. In 2018-19, the GST cess In 2018-19, the GST cess collected and compensation released to states were Rs 95,081 crore and Rs 69,275 crore, respectively. The virus outbreak and the world’s most stringent lockdown lasting over more than two months aggravated an already-slowing economy by obliterating consumption—which nearly contributes 60% to the economy. As a result, India’s economy is widely expected to witness its first contraction in nearly four decades.
The central government compensates states bi-monthly as they lost powers to levy taxes such as value added tax with the rollout of GST. The compensation is guaranteed for five years, and is calculated at a growth rate of 14% keeping 2015-16 as the base year. With declining GST collections last year following a demand-led slowdown, the government had stopped releasing compensation bi-monthly due to inadequate collection from GST compensation cess that is levied on Sin goods like liqour and Demerit Goods.
Since the cess collected was about Rs 70,000 crore less than the requirement to compensate states, the amount collected as excess in 2017-18 and 2018-19 of about Rs 47,271 crore was used for the same. Besides, Rs 33,412 crore—that was transferred to Consolidated Fund of India—as balance IGST in 2017-18, was also utilised to compensate states.
The government is exploring various options to adequately compensate states that involve raising money from the markets with a guarantee from the central government or by extending compensation levy beyond five years and continuing to compensate states with the collections.
Maharashtra received the highest compensation of Rs 19,233 crore in 2019-20 followed by Karnataka that got Rs 18,628 crore, the statement said. Meghalaya received the lowest compensation of Rs 157 crore. States such as Manipur, Mizoram, Sikkim, Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh reported surplus collection and didn’t need compensation from the Centre.
#GST #GSTCompensation
