'GST to help in better description of GDP'

New Delhi: The Goods and Services Tax, to be implemented from next month, will be an exciting development from data point of view and help provide a more complete description of the economic activity, Chief Statistician T C A Anant has said.

GST will provide data from the point of production to the point of sale because all these would be captured properly under the new indirect tax regime, he said.

The government proposes to roll out GST from July 1 that will subsume all major levies including excise, service tax and VAT.

"The GST network (GSTN) from a data point of view is a very exiting development because it is on single network, the transaction chain is being captured and leaves a lot of exiting possibilities," Anant told PTI in an interview.

"From the point of view of a statistician, this will eventually give us much more complete description of economic activities," he added.

On whether GST will give real time data, Anant replied, "There is data on collection of excise, VAT, service tax and sales tax. We use these in our GDP compilation at various places.

"GST continues to give us all these but now all of these would be collected through single framework. What we were getting earlier through multiple sources would now be from single source (the GSTN)".

The new set up will also give transactional data, movement of goods and services across borders, he said, adding that there will be a lot of information captured on GSTN. "We will presumably get much faster data. But let's see how it comes out."

Touted as the biggest taxation reform since the Independence, GST will create a uniform market in the country and is expected to boost GDP growth by about 2 per cent besides checking tax evasion.

The powerful GST Council, comprising Centre and states has recommended a four-tier tax structure -- 5, 12, 18 and 28 per cent for goods and services.

On top of the highest slab, a cess will be imposed on luxury and demerit goods to compensate the states for revenue loss in the first five years of GST implementation.

All states have agreed to the GST rollout from July 1.