Changes In GST Act Being Made To Help Corporate Growth: Jayant Sinha

BJP leader and chairman of the Parliamentary standing committee on finance Jayant Sinha on Thursday said that the government is striving hard to introduce changes in the Goods and Services Tax (GST) Act, Aadhar and other such public platforms in order to help companies use their data gainfully and grow.

"Public platforms such as UPI and Aadhaar are very important platforms. Even then, for us to leapfrog, we have to do more in terms of public platforms," Mr Sinha said while speaking at an industry body event.

When the Factoring Bill came to the standing committee, the government was opening up factoring to more non-banking financial companies and enabling more non banking finance companies (NBFCs) to participate in that, he said.

"But even as we were doing that, we were not addressing some important platform and data related issues. That is why we suggested that anything that is on GST as an invoice should automatically be gone to TReDS as well. Then it can be used on TReDS to finance receivables and so on. So, that was the recommendation of the committee, and I am very happy to tell you it was accepted by the government," Mr Sinha said.

TReDS is an institutional mechanism set up in order to facilitate the discounting of invoices for micro small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) from corporate buyers through multiple financiers.

At the same time he added that any change will need statutory backing through legislation, as the GSTN (GST Network) does not enable the usage of data within GSTN for any other purpose.

So, there is a need to change not only the central GST Act but all the state GSTN Acts to enable GSTN invoices to automatically get on to TReDS or other platforms, he added.

He said that GST is fast becoming the commercial backbone of this country, and the government is making necessary changes required to support the businesses.