India soon to remove interstate barriers: CII

New Delhi, Sep 26: In CII conference it was discussed that India would soon remove interstate trade barriers.

"Soon India will be like European Union (EU) with trade barriers being removed amongst the States" said V Sridhar, Chairman, Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC) in the conference on 'E-Invoicing: Adapting E-Business Practices and Policies in a Changing Economic Environment'.

"Government is geared up for the implementation of Goods and Services Tax (GST) by 1st April 2010 and efforts are being made to bring consensus among all States and the Centre to subsume State level levies and mitigate the challenges for a successful dual GST implementation."

He added that the Government was promoting 'e-business' and had started the Electronic Data Interchange ('EDI') initiative for the imports (Customs duty) in 1995, which presently covers 80 per cent of the country's trade through EDI and was expected to attain 90 per cent by end 2009.

Dr Ganesh Natarjan, Chairman CII National Committee on IT, ITES and eCommerce, and CEO & Vice Chairman of Zensar Technologies Ltd, said that CII was working with the stakeholders and the Government to enable an e-environment to bring multifold benefits of IT through governance, education, health care and agriculture.

"The objective of this Conference on e-Invoicing is to bring awareness about to benefits of e-invoicing and understand barriers of e-invoicing in India and discuss - simplifying financial supply chain management, global trade, international experiences, current challenges and suitable solutions", he said.

OneIndia News