For a few years now, India has occupied a special, growth-centric place in Western retailers’ hearts. However, India also has its own economy to worry about, and a new reform bill could assuage more of those concerns than previously thought.
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the upper house of India’s Parliament has passed an overhaul of the country’s tax systems. The bill, known as the Goods and Services bill, seeks to limit the redundancies and inefficiencies in India’s current tax code, which ranks toward the bottom of most global metrics on ease of compliance and value-added tax rates.
“The GST could be a game changer for the fast-growing Indian economy and provide a fillip to the Prime Minister’s ‘Make in India’ initiative,” Deepak Garg, founder of logistics firm Rivigo, told First Post. “We hope the government will move fast to simplify procedures and upgrade road infrastructure to world-class levels.”
The bill still has some legwork to do before it can become law. Because of the widespread changes in GST, it must be approved by a minimum of 15 of India’s 29 state legislatures.
However, with executives at Walmart and high-ranking politicians using language like “win-win legislative reform” to describe the GST bill, it would seem like too many eyes are watching for it all to fizzle out now.
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