Tamil Nadu Municipal Administration and Rural Development Minister S P Velumani on Wednesday urged Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman to reduce GST on machined job order items from the present 12 per cent to five per cent to help majority of micro and small scale industries (MSSI).
Velumani, who met her here, in a memorandum, said the Centre's recent order reducing GST on such job works from 18 per cent to 12 per cent did not benefit the MSSI much.
The government should treat all the machined job orders, where material input is not involved to be taxed, at the same level of 12 per cent GST.
The government can further reduce it to five per cent to benefit MSSI, the minister said.
Velumani also urged Sitharaman to release Rs. 2029.22 crore due to the state under the performance grant for 2017-18 to 2019-20.
Another Rs. 4345.57 crore due towards basic grant for 2019-20 for urban and urban local bodies as recommended by the 14th Finance Commission too may be released, the minister said.
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The funds will greatly benefit Tamil Nadu settle various utility bills of the urban local bodies and provide basic amenities like water, sanitation, waste management and street lights to the public, he said.
The release process might be speeded up as civic poll announcement is expected shortly in Tamil Nadu, Velumani said.
Later, addressing the 'best panchayats awards' function, he announced that the Tamil Nadu government would appoint data entry operators in every panchayat from the local community.
All the village panchayat secretaries have already been trained to operate computers, he said.
Altogether 11 awards were given to various panchayats in Tamil Nadu ranging from village to district level on the occasion.