Mart Roundtable on “Impact of Demonetization, Digital Economy and GST on Rural Business"

MART organized a Roundtable on "Impact of Demonetization, Digital economy and GST on Rural Business" on January 5, 2017 at India Habitat Centre, New Delhi. This roundtable saw a good representation from corporate, not-for-profit, academia, and media.

While welcoming the guest Mr. Pradeep Kashyap, CEO, MART highlighted recent decision on demonetization and felt that it is important for  corporate India to understand how this will impact their business and rework their strategy to benefit positively.

Mr. Pronab Sen, Former Advisor Planning Commission, Govt. of India said, the atmosphere of uncertainty has grown all over and people are holding cash for emergencies and spending only on essentials by curtailing their discretionary requirements.

Mr. Jagdish Shettigar, also felt that, “this initiatives would help in minimizing the corruption and yet this is designed to achieve the long term goals that would result in country’s development”.

Dr. Anup Kalra, Executive Director, Ayurvet Limited highlighted that, black money must be stopped and the money should be invested for the development of the country especially rural. Certainly there is an impact of demonetization; because of the move we are gradually shifting towards becoming a cashless economy but the farmers have suffered in the process. They work on credit. They save money at their home in form of cash and the sudden decision have disruptively affected the lives of many especially the farmers. Also, government is quite aware that who is having black money so the cleaning process could have been done by some other more feasible method.

Mr. V.S. Krishnan, Ex-Member, Central Board of Excise and Customs, Govt. of India, shared his thoughts about impact of GST and key finding in rural.

1.    Mr. Krishnan proudly stated that GST can do what demonetization was not be able to do as it will bring digitization into existence and keep a check on cheating.

2.    GST is designed in such a manner that all the B2B transactions will now be done through GST and all these transactions will be tracked and so there will be lesser chance of avoiding taxes or cheating.

3.    After GST registration process in Delhi, over 5 lacs bogus VAT registered dealer were found. GST-N will be linked with Pan Card so that it can directly relate to income tax. Gradually, people will come under audit and taxation which will automatically help in increasing the revenues of government. It is expected that there will be 16.5 million GST registration.

4.    GST will hugely benefit the transportation sector. Now the “Toll Chungis” will be eliminated because of which transportation of food and other products will be much faster and cheaper.

5.    With the goods and services tax across the states the business will be easier to do and there will be incentivisation to adhere to GST norms.

6.    Every state is going to follow a similar procedure therefore return will be one in the entire nation. The centre after two years of GST will not have to compensate the states.

7.    Organized manufacturer will be the biggest gainer in GST.

The roundtable was very participative with deep insights from the audience as well on the importance of the community and building the ecosystem.