Impact of gst on agricultural marketing in India

Good and Services Tax (GST) is a comprehensive tax levied on manufacturing, sale and consumption of goods and services at a national level. The uniformity in tax rates and procedures across the country will lead to various benefits for the economy and the consumers. GST has three major components viz., Central GST, State GST and Integrated GST. Fertiliser, an important element of agriculture, was previously taxed at 6 per cent but in the GST regime, the tax on fertilisers has been increased to 12 per cent. GST implementation will play favourable role for National Agricultural Market on merging all the different taxations on agricultural products that will enhance marketing efficiency. GST is vital to enhance the performance of supply chain mechanism in terms of transparency, reliability and timeliness, which in turn will ensure reduction in waste and cost of agricultural produce. The implementation of GST is inevitably linked to successful implementation of NAM as it aims at unified tax structure of goods and services which would eventually include agricultural production as well as marketing. GST would ensure that farmers in India, who contribute the most to GDP, would be able to sell their produce for the best available price.