Garment industry jittery over‘GST hike’

Ludhiana: The textile and garment industry is once again jittery due to the rumours doing rounds that the GST slab of 5 percent on their industry is going to be increased soon.

In wake of such development, several delegations of businessmen have already started giving memorandums to the officials of the state and centre GST departments to flag their concern about proposed hike with the centre government.s

Speaking on the issue, Harish Kairpal, president of Ludhiana MSME association , said “Earlier in the month of January our industry was saved from being destroyed after the GST council dropped its proposal to increase GST on textile and garment products of 5 percent slab to 12 percent. But once again the danger of hike in the tax slabs is looming large on us as we have come to know that discussions are going on to do away with the 5 percent slab which means the products currently taxable in this slab will attract higher rates of tax. If this step is taken then micro and small units into garment and textile industry will be completely wiped off from the map of the country and centre government should therefore ensure that no change in the 5 percent tax slab is done”

According to Narinder Mittal, general secretary of Ludhiana Business Forums, “We are totally against any kind of hike in the existing slabs of GST applicable on the industry because even one percent of hike would result in disaster. Already industry is facing huge financial crunch and increase in GST would mean increase in our investments.”