State Finance Minister Rameshwar Oraon on Thursday said that the State’s financial condition is in bad phase at the same time requesting the Centre to release its pending share of Goods and Services Tax (GST) and Central taxes. Oraon was raising State’s demands at the 41st GST council meeting chaired by Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman. Finance ministers of different states attended the GST meet through videoconferencing which ran for more than five hours.
Sharing the highlights of the meeting, Finance minister Oraon said, “Today’s GST council meet was held amid severe pressure from states that have been seeking compensation for revenue shortfall amid the coronavirus pandemic. In the meeting the finance minister proposed that states could borrow with the Centre facilitating the process and repayment of borrowing can be done post 2022 from cess collections.”
Expressing Jharkhand's concern the finance minister demanded the Centre to release Rs 2481 crore pending dues of GST and Central taxes. Oraon said, “In the meeting the union finance minister stated that the centre is hard pressed on paying GST dues to states that have not earned much this year due to months of lockdown necessitated by the COVID-19 crisis.
However, we urge the Centre that our GST dues is only Rs 2500 crore. We are a small and backward state and the centre should have no problem in releasing our pending share dues.”
At the GST council meet, the finance minister also raised the issue of pending coal royalty which the Jharkhand has to get from the Centre.
At the meet, Oraon said that the Centre has acquired around 5000 acres of land for coal mining out which the state has to get Rs 4500 crore as royalty, but in July this year when the Union Coal minister Pralhad Joshi handed over a cheque of Rs 250 crore as part payment of royalty to chief minister Hemant Soren. At the meet the finance minister stated that there was no proposal to raise tax rates to make up for the revenue shortfall that has been compounded due to the Covid-19 pandemic presenting two options under which the state could borrow from the market to make up for the estimated deficit of Rs 2.35 lakh crore this fiscal, while the shortfall in compensation due to implementation of GST has been estimated to be Rs 97,000 crore.
The finance minister gave states two options, the first being providing a special window to states, in consultation with RBI, for borrowing Rs 97,000 crore at a reasonable interest rate. The second is to borrow the entire Rs 2.35 lakh crore shortfall under the special window.