Addressing college students on the Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad (IIM-A), Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Thursday stated that it’s for each the Centre and the states to take a seat and speak over the rising gas costs.
Replying to a query on when the federal government is planning to scale back the cess or different taxes on gas and if its stance to make use of the gas cess to generate income will change, Sitharaman — throughout the JSW School of Public Policy Institute Lecture on ‘The Economic Rebound and the Indian Economy in 2021 and Beyond’ — said: “It is not just the cess, you have an excise duty of the Centre, then you have a VAT of the states which are percentage driven. We can bicker about who earns more. You are right if you say that the Centre earns more but everything that the Centre earns, 40 per cent of it goes to the states.”
“So there is revenue both for the Centre and the states. That is why I strongly believe that it is no longer competitive. If the end consumer should pay less and the burden should be less on them and I concede it also from the point of view that more the fuel costs, more the inflation, but it is no longer competitive as Centre says you reduce first then the states will come on board, it may or may not be the case,” Sitharaman stated, including, “If eventually … the consumers ought to be bearing so much of the burden, it is both the Centre and the states that have to talk. I concede this is where the action has to be.”
However, she added she gained’t have the ability to say when is the federal government planning to chop cesses on gas.
“It’s a dharamsankat,” she stated on a lighter notice.
When requested concerning the farmers’ protest and their demand to offer a authorized statute to the minimal help value (MSP) and the Centre’s apprehension to take action, Sitharaman stated certainly MSP must be part of the statute and given a authorized backing, however questioned why the identical wasn’t felt within the ten-year rule of the UPA authorities and puzzled “what is the issue actually here”.
