Days after West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said that agreeing to the implementation of Goods and Services Tax (GST) on the advice of then state Finance Minister Amit Mitra was a “very big blunder”, Mitra on Wednesday said that a single tax regime would have saved the MSMEs had it been “transparently delivered”.

Calling the CM’s anguish over the “current mess” in the GST “rightly said”, Mitra said, “Mamata Banerjee, empathetic as she is to MSMEs, took a stand in favour of GST. Eight years later, a headline-grabbing, publicity-hungry central government launched GST from the Central Hall of Parliament (OPTICS only) in July 2017, when the computer system was not even close to ready. The GST Network was to process 300 CRORES of invoices, uplinked EVERY MONTH. A task, which the GSTN simply failed in & then came one ADMINISTRATIVE FAILURE of the Government of Indian after another,” Mitra, who was state Finance Minister from 2011 to 2021, posted on X.

Recently, during her visit to North Bengal, the chief minister said, “I believe the GST should be revoked. Amit Mitra had convinced me earlier, and I had agreed, but that was a mistake, a very big blunder.”

The advice Mamata was referring to could have been offered by Mitra while he was chairperson of the empowered committee of state finance ministers, which worked out the details of the GST before its imposition in 2017.