FOPSIA planning to go for PIL for getting interest on delay of VAT refunds

Ludhiana, August 29, 2019: Federation of Punjab Small Industries Associations (FOPSIA) president Badish Jindal has stated that Punjab Government is claiming high incentives for industries but the fact is that the state is performing very poor in GST.

In a reply of RTI from him the department accepted that 309.59 crores VAT refunds are pending, in which refund of 211.70 crore is pending due to pendancy of documents. 84.14 crores refunds sacntioned, 56.69 crores issued to treasurery. But the treasurery only issued refunds of 11.68 crores and 45.01 crores of rupees are still in treasurery.

In a statmenet here today, he added that the factual position is the no money is there in treasurery for VAT refunds so those funds must have syphoned by the government for other expenses.

But the factual position is that VAT refunds of more than 700 crores are pending in the state. This amount is only pertaining to the cases where documents are already submitted and the department is delaying the cases due to corruption and scarcity of funds.

Further the data doesn’t match with the offices as VAT refund of 166 crores pending in Ludhiana only and the state government is claiming the total VAT refunds of 85.14 crores(with clear documents). So the government is hiding the facts from public,

Adding, he said the state is passing throught the worst crises in regard to SGST collection as during 2017-18 (from aug 17 to march 2018) the collection was 3602 crores which comes around 450 crores a month, whereas during 2018-19 the collection was 5404 crores which also was 450 crores a month. So the central government gave compensation of 4037 crpres to punjab during 2017-18 and 7129 crores during 2018-19. But the policy of compensation is only upto2022 as after that the states will have to manage their GST income from their own states GST revenue.

“This is the reason for delay of gst refunds by state government as state government is bankrupt in SGST matters”, he said, adding, “So by 2022 the state is going to be bankrupt due to non availability of compensation of GST from central government.”

Concluding, he reveealed that the FOPSIA is planning to go for PIL for getting interest on the delay of VAT refunds as the act provides the provision of interest if VAT delayed beyond 60 days .