Conrad writes to Union Finance min on 0% GST for broom trade
NEW DELHI/SHILLONG: The broom, which is Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s magic wand and the Aam Aadmi Party’s lightsaber, has become a cause for much political debate with the plastic lobby in the country pushing for replacement of natural grass brooms.
Natural grass mainly grows in the North East, which is the single largest producer of brooms in the country. The demand for the commodity has increased under the Modi government after the launch of the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan.
But with the powerful plastic lobby flexing its muscles, several tribal farmers and small-time traders are at the risk of losing their livelihood. So the two Lok Sabha members from the State, Conrad Sangma and Vincent H. Pala, have demanded that no GST be imposed on the natural product.
Sangma, in a letter to Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, has said there is a move by “certain groups” to try and include “phul-jharu” (natural grass) in a higher tax category, “which will seriously affect the industry and lead to huge economic loss for local people and loss of employment also”.
The Tura MP said the success of the North East’s natural grass industry has created interest among multinationals and plastic article manufacturers and alleged that to garner the market created by the hard efforts of farmers and traders, the plastic industry lobby launched an unethical campaign few years back by introducing plastic broom.
“With the introduction of GST, the plastic lobby has once again started their campaign to restrict the advantage of phul-jharu brooms,” he said.
While Sangma has taken up the matter with Jaitley, Pala raised his concern in the consultative committee meeting recently.
The North East grows over 125,000 metric tonnes (MT) of broom grass annually; a large chunk of this stock is supplied to different areas of the country where it gets packaged and sold in retail in markets. The broom industry is estimated to be over Rs 100 crore. However, the sector is largely unorganised.
Meghalaya alone accounts for around 30,000 MT of broom grass. Assam produces 20,000MT, Nagaland produces 25,000 MT, Mizoram 15,000MT, Arunachal Pradesh and Sikkim roughly accounts for 10,000MT and 25,000MT, respectively, of natural grass, which grows in December.
In his letter to Jaitley, Conrad tried to justify the fragile nature of the natural broom industry in the region in the face of the highly organised plastic industry. “Most of the broom grass farmers and manufacturers are small and marginal poor tribals who cannot compete with an organised industry,” he said.
The plastic lobby is trying to classify broomsticks as branded and unbranded and put the branded brooms in the higher tax schedule of GST, the MP added.
“Due to the deceit campaign, if the phul-jharu is split into branded and unbranded then the entire NE broom industry will suffer an irreversible loss and lose their advantage over plastic brooms,” Sangma said.
The MPs, though one from the treasury bench and the other from opposition, came together to urge the Centre to put natural brooms in the 0% GST category. They also demanded to do away with the branded and non-branded division in the broom industry, which is largely forest-based.