Infosys to be equipted with GST Network Project in a few months

Dated 13th October, 2015

Infosys, which had won the Goods and Services Tax (GST) Network project a while ago, on Monday said that it will complete the Goods and Services Tax Network project in a few months. The GST will pave the way for the roll out of the country’s biggest tax reform.

“The five and half year-long project will include one year to set up and another four and half years to run it,” said U B Pravin Rao, COO, Infosys.

The Centre recently appointed Infosys to design the IT network for Goods and Services Tax, after it won the bid to implement the network that will make India a common market with a uniform levy. But, it has been facing delays in its implementation for want of political consensus. Infosys was chosen from five contenders for the prestigious project worth $200 million or about `1,380 crore, then.

Rao said, there are many interesting projects. But, lately nothing interesting coming up. Infosys will develop both the hardware and applications for GST, and provide end-to-end deployment for GST network.

The existing tax systems for state VAT will be integrated in the current network. Infosys will also develop the GST network backend for 16 states.

The proposed tax regime is scheduled to be rolled out from April 2016 but a political deadlock is delaying the passage of the Constitution (One Hundred Twenty Second Amendment) Bill required to roll out GST.

While the GST Bill has been passed by the Lok Sabha where the NDA government has a majority, the Opposition’s protest in the Rajya Sabha has prevented any discussion in the recently-concluded monsoon session. The Narendra Modi government now plans to take up the GST Bill in the winter session of Parliament.