Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s letter to PM Modi was answered by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman defending the Centre’s decision to impose a 5 per cent tax on vaccines and 12 per cent on medicines and oxygen concentrators.
Ms Sitharaman said that the tax was essential to keep the costs of these low to ensure the local vaccine makers don’t have to increase the prices for consumers in a way.
“If full exemption from GST (Goods and Services Tax) were given, the domestic producers of these items would be unable to offset taxes paid on their inputs and input services and would pass these on to the end consumers by increasing their price,” the Finance Minister gave details in a thread of tweets.
The explanation came in following Mamata Banerjee’s appeal to PM Modi to waive off taxes on covid medicines and oxygen tankers in view of the growing pandemic and the demand rise.
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Continuing with her response, Ms Sitharaman reiterated that the Centre has already exempted covid-19 drugs and items related to it from import taxes and 70% of the IGST (Integrated Goods and Services Tax) gets sent to all states.
Since swearing in as the Chief Minister of Bengal for the third consecutive term on Wednesday, the recent letter was the third one to PM Modi. Her letters included mentions of the current covid situation and the need to tackle the oxygen crisis.
She urged the central government to waive off GST and customs duty taxes from the aids like oxygen concentrators, cylinders to cryogenic storage tanks and COVID-19 medicines that is coming in from “organisations, individuals and benevolent agencies” to “encourage private aid”.
many of the donors and agencies have approached the state government to consider exemption of these items from duty/SGST/CGST/IGST. As the rate structure falls under the purview of the centre, I would request that these items may be exempted from GST/customs duty and other such duties and taxes, to help remove supply constraints…” she wrote in her letter.
Stressing on the importance of these moves, the CM said that the donations would “greatly supplement the efforts of the state government in meeting the huge gap in demand and supply” of medical resources.
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The second wave of coronavirus has left states gasping for breath quite literally as oxygen demand sky-rocketed and the gas remained in shortage resulting in the death of thousands across the country. Ms Banerjee’s victory in the assembly elections of 2021 was in line with India’s downfall in its healthcare sector.
Bengal registered more than 19,000 new cases within the last 24 hours taking the total infections to over 1.25 lakh. The reported over 12,000 deaths due to covid till now.
