The Odisha government will soon restore incentives to manufacturers on the lines available prior to the rollout of Goods and Services Tax (GST) regime, a top State Government official said.

Indications are that the new incentives will be patterned on the Value Added Tax-refund scheme that was prevalent prior to July 1, when GST was introduced.

“The proposals for the fiscal incentives are in their final stages and will be ready by this month end. Odisha used to offer a refund of 75 per cent of the VAT paid before the GST regime to manufacturing industries. We will have to substitute the reimbursement through an appropriate mechanism,” Sanjeev Chopra, Principal Secretary, State Industries Department, told BusinessLine.

“The total amount of refund was capped at 200 per cent of the investment on machinery over 7 years for priority industries and 5 years for the rest,” Chopra added.

The incentives will come out of the State Goods and Services Tax (SGST) collections to encourage setting up of manufacturing centres, Chopra had said in an earlier interview.

Area-based excise exemptions given to the industry by the North-Eastern and hill States, including Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir, were to shrink considerably under the GST regime. Though the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs had extended the area-based tax breaks for residual 10 years in August, this was largely limited to hilly states.

But these exemptions are not the only measures adopted by Odisha that is going for the assembly elections in 2019.

Chopra said, “We have launched the GO-SWIFT (Government of Odisha – Single Window for Investor Facilitation & Tracking) portal. This is an end to end single window clearance portal we have launched to aid setting up businesses in the state.” “Inspection reports are uploaded on this portal within 48 hours. It also allows paying dues and raising complaints,” he added.

Commenting on the recent approvals for projects in the state, Chopra said that Sajjan Jindal controlled JSW Group has got the approval for a 12-million-tonne-steel-plant in the State. “The land assessment for the project is being done now. The ground breaking can be expected in the next 3-4 months.”

 

Source: Business Line

 

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