CAIT lauds GST Council’s decision to allow small vendors to sell goods through e-commerce portals

New Delhi, Dec 17 (Agency) Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) on Saturday welcomed the decision of the GST Council to allow small unregistered vendors to sell their goods through e-commerce portals. In a statement, CAIT National President B C Bhartia and Secretary General Praveen Khandelwal said the decision will empower small traders who are below GST threshold limit to expand their business through e-commerce and will strongly strengthen Digital India vision of PM Shri Modi. ‘There are more than 8 crore small traders in the country but a large number of traders are conducting business activities without GST registration since their annual sale is below the GST threshold limit.

Such traders will now be able to trade on e-commerce,’ they said. Bhartia and Khandelwal said India is fast emerging as the e-commerce hub and there is tremendous growth in online business. ‘E-commerce business in India is now approximately 10% of total retail and around 25-50% of some sectors like garments and electronics. In view of this it was extremely pertinent that small vendors, those who have small turnovers and do not fall under the purview of the GST, were not able to conduct online business, thus causing huge loss of market and business opportunities,’ they said. The GST Council in its 47th meeting granted in-principle approval for allowing unregistered suppliers and composition taxpayers to make intra-state supply of goods through E-Commerce Operators (ECOs), subject to certain conditions.