If states agree, petroleum and gas can be brought under the GST ambit: FM Sitharaman

Feb 16, 2023

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Wednesday said that should the states agree, petroleum and gas under the ambit of Goods and Services Tax (GST). "Once the states agree, we will have petroleum products in the GST," she said.

Speaking at the Post-Budget interactive session with the members of the industry chamber PHDCCI, the union minister said that the central government is completely aligning itself with the fiscal consolidation roadmap.

On the Budget, she said that the idea was to ensure that growth momentum should not be relaxed or diluted.

"Consistently for the last three-four years, the emphasis has been given on public capital expenditure. We have kept that up in this budget...capital expenditure, clearly can be said as a real focus of this budget," she said.

"We wanted to ensure that public capex should continue at an elevated pace so that we can play the anchor role in boosting investments in the economy," she said.

"States have to be a part of the Centre's capex initiatives, so allocated Rs 1.3 trillion to them for FY24," the minister added. She further said that the states were being nudged to carry forward reforms in various sectors including power and also implement the 'one nation, one ration card' scheme.

[The Economic Times]