Cloth Merchants, Traders To Go On 3-day Strike Against 5 Per Cent GST From June 27

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Cloth Merchants, Traders To Go On 3-day Strike Against 5 Per Cent GST From June 27

Wholesale cloth merchants have announced plans to go on a three-day nationwide strike by downing their shutters from Tuesday (June 27), in protest at the 5% Goods and Services Tax (GST).

Others in the textile trading network like traders, transporters and courier companies exclusively working on cloth delivery are also expected to join the protest for three days. They have demanded exemption from GST for a year, training on taxation as well as helpdesk numbers with adequate guidance.

Gaurang Ramprasad Bhagat, who is president of the Maskati Cloth Market Association, which is an Ahmedabad-based body claiming to represent cloth merchants across the country said that the downstream textile value chain works on a long period credit basis, based on mutual trust for several decades.

He said that these businesses which are an integral part of the textile industry including wholesalers, traders, angadiyas (traditional couriers), transporters and courier companies, need to be protected with at least a year of GST exemptions.

He said that the strike would eventually have a cascading but gradual impact on the entire textile industry, since merchants play a pivotal role in transportation of cotton for yarn, fabric and clothes. The majority of those in the textile value chain lack facilities to track movement of goods and hence are unable to claim input credit, he said.

Meanwhile, textile traders across Telangana state represented by the Telangana State Federation of Textile Association (TSFTA) comprising an estimated 40,000 micro, small and medium establishments have also indicated plans to go on a 72-hour strike from Tuesday morning demanding an exemption from GST.

TSFTA president Ammanabolu Prakash and vice-president Santosh Chokani have said that with GST which they claimed would destroy at least 8,000 of the 40,000 traders in Telangana state.

They said that the textile trading sector had the largest number of illiterate people who knew nothing about either computerisation or GST, adding that only 11% of shops in the country have computers due to which it is impossible to educate all traders immediately.