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India
oi-Deepika S
New Delhi, May 09: Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Sunday said GST exemption to domestic supplies and commercial import of COVID drugs, vaccines and oxygen concentrators would make these items costlier for consumers as manufacturers would not be able to offset the taxes paid on inputs.
Responding to Mamata Banerjee’s letter to PM Modi in a series of 16 tweets, the Union Finance Minister pointed out that the full exemption from Customs duties, including IGST, was already available to all COVID relief material imported by the Indian Red Cross for free distribution in the country.
In a series of tweets, Sitharman further said that the union government has already exempted a host of items from GST and customs duty.
“From the GST collected on vaccine, half is earned by the Centre and the other half by the States. Further, 41 per cent of Centre’s collections also get devolved to the States,” Sitharaman said.
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“So States end up receiving almost 70 per cent of the total revenue collected from vaccines. In fact, a nominal 5 per cent GST is in the interest of the domestic manufacturer of vaccine and in the interest of the citizens.”
“Full exemption from Customs duties, including IGST, is already available to all Covid relief material (not confined to a list) imported by for free distribution in the country and also exemption from all duties has been provided to Remdesivir injections, Remdesivir API,” she said.
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