'For Apical, transition to GST was very smooth'

Tejas Sheth, Director - Apical in a chat with VARINDIA discusses how GST can prove to be a big milestone for the industry despite the many operational challenges that businesses might face initially -

How is GST a significant milestone for Indian economy?

There are different taxes and all those taxes will get replaced by single tax system, that itself is a major milestone. The extra hassle of paying several taxes will go away. It is definitely a big milestone and I believe ‘One country one tax’ is a big thing.

Has your organization implemented GST within the organization?

Yes, we have implemented GST and we have started our commercial transaction in GST, hence, it is already been implemented in our organization.

What were the operational challenges in implementing GST within the organization?

Luckily we have been into the business of imports for past many years so we were all aware of HSN code, whereas the trade community and the channel partners who were not into import, they didn’t know what HSN code is, so basically they had a challenge but comparatively for us it was a very smooth transition. I believe it’s just that the scenario has changed and instead of CVD we now have to pay IGST. Technically for us it was just a matter of 45 minutes and we were ready with the software and we implemented and got the understanding of the same in just one day.

How has GST implementation helped you in terms of ease of doing business?

Earlier there were some transactional challenges and many discrepancies which used to arrive which will not arrive now because they will have to generate a form from the site; these are some of the things which will help and make it easier for us in future in terms of doing business.

How will digital transactions through GST help increase in business for the company?

More than helping, it will smoothen the transaction as one will have to be very careful while selecting their supplier because if the supplier does not pay the tax then you don’t get the credit. People will start scrutinizing whether the supplier is right or wrong and how long they’ve been into business and their details like whether they’ve been paying tax or not. These things will help to clear out all the trade community which were evading tax or were not paying tax on time. The channel partners will have to be careful from where they want to buy. All these factors put together is going to help us a lot.

How will GST support “Make in India” initiative in the long run?

The anticipated lift to the manufacturing sector will make the proposed taxes a chief empowering influence to actualize advantages from “Make in India” activities. I believe, in this way GST will support “Make in India” initiative in the long run.

What are the future challenges with respect to GST which needs to be implemented as per government regulation?

I will not call it challenges but of course there will be something called as teething problem by which I mean is when babies get teething problem they get diarrhea or fever etc., similarly small hiccups can come if the software is not linked properly or payment issues for which government has been kind enough to give 6 months of remission for all these little issues which is beneficial for people and also it will help a lot. So basically what I mean is, this is like a teething challenge which means any new thing which comes it has to adjust, initially it does face some challenges but later on it gets used to it.