TEA President Raja M Shanmugham, has thanked the finance minister Arun Jaitley for considering the requisition and helping to fix GST rate at 5 per cent for garments including cotton, cotton yarn and fabrics.

He said this would help the predominentary cotton based textile industry to grow and also increase exports.

M Shanmugham also thanked textile minister Smriti Irani for helping to fix the GST rate for garments at lowest rate at

He also hailed Edappadi Palanisamy chief minister of Tamil Nadu for recommending to fix GST rate at 5 per cent in the GST council meeting.

However, Shanmugham said he was disappointed for fixed the GST rate at 18 per cent for synthetic Fibre and Fabrics and noted that the garments units may find it difficulty in offsetting Input Tax Credit.

He also concerned about the service tax fixed for job working units at 18 per cent where more than 80 per cent of garment exporting units in Tirupur cluster are carrying out the job working activities and appealed to the GST council to exempt the job working units in payment of Service Tax.

– Apparel and Textile News, Apparel Talk, Indian Apparel