Keeping fingers crossed on breakthrough in GST Council, says FM Arun Jaitley

NEW DELHI: The GST Council today failed to reach consensus on the contentious issue of dual control and will meet again on December 11 and 12 to hammer out the differences. "The critical issue is of cross empowerment or dual control. Are we close to a resolution? I will still keep my fingers crossed," Jaitley told media persons after the GST Council meet. "Logjams are created only to be broken. We will discuss it further on December 11 and 12," he added. The fifth meeting of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) Council, headed by Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and comprising state finance ministers, ended today. "There is no consensus... we were not able to arrive at a consensus regarding the cross empowerment model. Therefore, the GST laws could not be completed. No compensation law is taken up, but formula has arrived and we will rediscuss them," Kerala Finance Minister Thomas Issac told reporters here after the two-day meeting. The Centre intends to implement GST from April 1 next year. Due to Constitutional compulsion, the GST has to be rolled out by September 16, 2017, as the existing indirect taxes will come to an end and it would not be possible for either the Centre or states to collect the taxes. The GST Council is supposed to finalise the model GST, Integrated GST (IGST) and compensation laws.