Goods and Services Tax (GST) Council held its 44th meeting, presided by the Union Finance Minister, Nirmala Sitharaman. During this meeting, the council slashed tax rates of several COVID drugs and essentials which have been in use in order to control the pandemic.
A number of recommendations had been made to the GST Council by the Group of Ministers on tax relief for COVID essentials. The Council had accepted those recommendations and provided these reliefs.
The medicines which are being used for treating the newly found variant of COVID-19, Black Fungus, have been subjected to zero tax rate. The medicines like Tocilizumab and Amphotericin B were earlier subjected to 5% tax rate.
Similarly, the rates of the drugs which had been recommended by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, including Remdesivir, have been brought down to 5% from 12%. Along with MoHPW, Department of Pharma had also recommended these drugs for COVID treatment.
Another major COVID essential is ambulance. The GST rate on ambulances has been reduced from 28% to 12%. Looking at the gravity of the situation where all patients were not able to avail the facility of ambulance, the council took this decision.
For the COVID essentials namely medical grade oxygen, BiPaP machines, oxygen concentrators, ventilators, pulse oxymeters, and COVID testing kits the GST rate has been reduced from 12% to 5%.
Hand sanitizer had been one of the major COVID essential since the outbreak of pandemic. Earlier it was subjected to 18% GST, which has now been reduced to 5%.
All the reductions/exemptions would be in force upto September 30, 2021.
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