Slowdown in economy News

India Inc has welcomed the outcome of the GST Council meet.

The GST Council made sweeping changes to give relief to small and medium businesses on filing and payment of taxes, eased rules for exporters and cut tax rates on more than two dozen items.

In a relief to small and medium enterprises, the GST Council has raised the turnover threshold to Rs 1 crore for businesses to avail of the composition scheme that allows them to pay 1-5 per cent tax without going through tedious formalities.

The GST Council discussed issues faced by small traders and requested quarterly filing of returns for small businesses.

The full fledged meeting of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) Council is also likely to assess the improvements in the GST Network's functioning.

Pulled down by sluggish manufacturing, growth in the Indian economy in the first quarter of this fiscal fell to 5.7 percent, clocking the lowest GDP growth rate since Narendra Modi took power in May 2014.

The official said that the economy was passing through a "transitory phase" after the government`s decision late last year to outlaw old high-value banknotes and after the launch of a nationwide goods and services tax in July.

Attributing the slowdown in first quarter GDP to higher subsidy outgo, Finance Ministry on Wednesday expressed confidence that good monsoon and impact of pay commission award will push the economic growth close to 8 percent in the current fiscal.

The amount of bad loans written off or restructured by the PSU banks has more than doubled in the last three years ending March 2014 to Rs 42,447 crore.