Budget 2021: CPAI recommends waiving off Commodity Transaction Tax

Ahead of Budget 2021, Narinder Wadhwa, President of Commodity Participants Association of India (CPAI) said that the government must look at waiving off the Commodity Transaction Tax (CTT).

“We have achieved a lot in ease of doing business; we are ranked 79th. India is ranked 7th on protecting minorities’ interest. But what is lacking, which has been reported by the World Bank, is lack of dearth in our market and lack of liquidity in our market. What we are trying to say is we can improve the liquidity and cost of transaction through rationalising CTT and the other taxes which government levies,” he said.

Wadhwa reasoned that volumes in commodities have dipped since CTT. “Since 2013, when CTT was introduced, if we compare China’s volumes, they have doubled or tripled, whereas our volumes have declined by 60 percent. Had we been following the international trends, our transaction would have been around Rs 1,50,000 crore. So, the taxes collected from the total volumes like GST and all, would have been more than Rs 600 crore,” he said.