Gst - one Right Step Towards National Agricultural Market

GST: One right step towards National Agricultural Market

National Agricultural Market (NAM) is a central scheme to facilitate farmers, traders, and buyers with a common platform for trading agricultural commodities. The commodities on National Market will be traded on the basis of their assessment electronically. In an ideal situation, a trader/buyer anywhere in the country will be able to bid for this commodity. The common market will have an advantage over existing markets in terms of transparency, competition, efficiency, market information, and risk.

The present agricultural market structure and Agricultural Produce Market Committee (APMC) rules often do not work in the favor of farmers and traders. The APMC rules have restricted farmers, access from a larger pool of buyers. And, there are always transportation hindrances across states because of different taxation rates and regulation in states. Also, agriculture market in the country is suffering from lack of uniformity between States and sometimes within States.

With the implementation of Goods and Services Tax (GST), which abolishes border commercial tax checkposts, one can expect little or no hindrance in transportation time of perishable agricultural goods. Interstate trading is subjected to various taxes, permission, licenses, often creating a bottleneck in trading of products across the country. The implementation of single rate taxation would make the movement of goods hassle free across states. Implementing GST would liberalize the marketing of agricultural products and creating a smooth transaction of goods. Products which are manufactured or produced in one part of the country can easily find a marketplace in another part of the country. One of the other positive factors is that it would make the agri-machineries affordable to marginal farmers through reduction in high excise duty on the machinery. Agricultural products have always had the diversity in taxation rates so a single rate of goods and service tax would benefit the national agricultural market and help the farmers and traders to sell their products in any part of the country and receive a best and transparent price for their product.