Mamata urges PM to waive taxes on medical equipment, drugs

Kolkata: West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Sunday wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, requesting him to waive all forms of taxes and customs duty on equipment and drugs being used to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. Banerjee also urged Modi to strengthen health infrastructure and augment supplies of equipment, medicines and oxygen for treatment of coronavirus-positive patients.

"A large number of organisations, individuals and benevolent agencies have come forward to donate oxygen concentrators, cylinders, containers and COVID-related drugs. "Many of the donors have approached the state government to consider exemption of these from customs duty, SGST, CGST, IGST," she said in the letter. "As the rate structure falls under the purview of the central government, I would request that these items may be exempted from GST/customs duty and other such duties and taxes to help remove supply constraints of the above-mentioned life-saving drugs and equipment and contribute towards effective management of the COVID pandemic," Banerjee said.

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said that a 5 per cent tax on vaccines and 12 per cent on medicines and oxygen concentrators was necessary to keep costs low.

"If full exemption from GST (Goods and Services Tax) were given, the domestic producers of these items would be unable to offset taxes paid on their inputs and input services and would pass these on to the end consumers by increasing their price." she explained. Earlier, leading international medical journal The Lancet called upon the Modi-led government to "own up to its mistakes, provide responsible leadership and implement a public health response that has science at its heart to contain Covid". As coronavirus infections continue to spiral out of control in India, in a strongly worded statement, the Indian Medical Association (IMA) said that the Union health ministry should "wake up" and make serious efforts to contain the spread of the virus. Accusing the health ministry of not taking appropriate action to deal with the current crisis, the IMA Saturday said it is "astonished to see the extreme lethargy" of the ministry.

"IMA demands the health ministry to wake up from its slumber and respond to mitigate the growing challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic. IMA is astonished to see the extreme lethargy and inappropriate actions from the ministry of health in combating the agonising crisis born out of the devastating second wave of COVID-19 pandemic," the IMA said in a statement.

As coronavirus infections continue to spiral out of control in India, in a strongly worded statement, the Indian Medical Association (IMA) said that the Union health ministry should "wake up" and make serious efforts to contain the spread of the virus.